


Let Your Plans Come Out of Mistakes

by lorax



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Lydia, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Lydia Martin, F/F, F/M, Knotting, M/M, Multi, Other, POV Alternating, Pack, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Pack Feels, Polyamory, Power Dynamics, The Alpha Pack, Werewolf Lydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:12:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorax/pseuds/lorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia Martin creates her Pack, takes her Fields medal and changes the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Still make lemonade taste like a sunny day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saltandbyrne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandbyrne/gifts).



> **Additional Warnings:** Canonical levels of underage (characters 16-17 and up), brief mentions of canonical levels of blood/violence, mild power play and sub/dom | alpha/beta dynamics, mentions of pregnancy and brief abortion discussion, canon divergence/au, knotting, playing fast and loose with Teen Wolf universe lore and the basic structure of the college and graduate system, vague casting spoilers for S3.
> 
> **Author's Notes:** Written for the [2012 TW Holiday Exchange](http://tw-holidays.livejournal.com/). This was written completely unspoiled for anything in Season 3 aside from very vague casting sheets, so its assumptions about the Alpha Pack could be Jossed already. The title is from the song [Hoping Machine](http://youtu.be/Mn-toQNxlLI).
> 
> Aside from the knowledge gained via wiki, I know nothing about the Fields Medal, and have zero math skills. Please forgive the handwavey nature of said things, as Lydia is good at math but I am not.
> 
> The original request was for Lydia/Jackson, Scott/Jackson, or Stiles/Derek, and various shades of polyamory welcome. Because of that, I tried to keep the focus mostly on the requested characters, but there are mentions of basically every Pack combo plus Danny, with the exception of Peter.
> 
> **Additional Notes:** This is basically a jigsaw puzzle of a story where the opening, present tense scenes set the stage and then the rest of the scenes fill in pieces of the story to explain how it happened. While the story is complete as-is, additional Pack members' POV sections may be added at a later date, because I got attached to this world.

  
**Let Your Plans Come Out of Mistakes**   
_“Back when everything was still to come,_  
luck leaked out everywhere.  
I gave my promise to the world,  
and the world followed me here."  
\-- Rita Dove, "Testimonial"   


_Lydia Martin doesn't win the Fields medal in 2018. She's not invited to the ceremony that gives it to her former mentor. She crashes the party anyway._

_Dr. Keith Raymond is the second of three recipients to accept his award that year. In his speech, he thanks his dedicated team at Princeton, and talks about how his research and breakthrough wouldn't have been possible without them. He pauses midway through and says how fortunate he's been to have worked with dedicated individuals who couldn't be sidelined by one individual's mistakes. His smile is sly when he mentions it, and his throwaway joke ends with _just because one person howled at the moon, it doesn't mean the rest of us lost sight of what matters_. There is a titter in the watching audience that's a slow-wave response as it filters through the half dozen translators in the room. The event hosts shift uncomfortably. Dr. Raymond is about to continue when a single figure in the back of the room stands._

_Lydia wears white as she pulls the ballroom doors open, her gown too short to be conservative and her red hair piled in a cool twist atop her head. The neckline sweeps sideways, leaving one shoulder bare. There is a blood red stone around her neck on a long gold chain. She is stunning, and she is silent, and not one person thinks to stop her. Ten people file into the doors she opens, and the security stand by, staring wide-eyed and not moving an inch._

_Lydia is petite, even in the sharp stilettos, but the tall men who flank her somehow do nothing to make her look **small**. Her heels click a sharp tattoo against the floor as she walks up the stairs. The two bored cameramen assigned to the event focus gleefully on her beautiful face, happy to have something to do aside from filming speeches about math that no one will ever watch._

_Dr. Raymond is ashen beneath the spray-on orange tan and he doesn't even try to keep Lydia from taking the podium. Her group of ten fan out down the aisles, leaving just two to flank her. They growl a soft warning at her side as Dr. Raymond stumbles back. They move uniformly and smooth, every one in formal wear that reeks of the same taste as the stark gown and killer heels Lydia herself wears. They are all in black and red, save Lydia._

_Lydia smiles at the camera. "Dr. Raymond was, as usual, less than forthcoming. It's not his team he has to thank; it's me. The medal he was awarded is for work I've done, which I'll be happy to prove to the committee."_

_"She's insane. She thinks she's a-" Dr. Raymond's frantic arguments are short lived, his voice cuts off as soon as the man nearest him growls._

_From Lydia's other side, Derek Hale grits his teeth, and hisses quietly. "You're sure about this? No turning back from here."_

_Lydia shrugs her bare shoulder. "You should know better than to ask me that by now." Her voice lifts, floating out over the audience and carrying through the microphones. "As this is a room full of mathematicians, I'm going to assume you all spend a great deal of time on the internet, and thus know who I am. Fake Werewolf Girl was everyone's favorite meme. It even helped Keith, here, get me discredited and take my work to sign his name on. But I don't let go of things easily and I am much, much smarter than he is. There's is nothing fake about me - which is less than I can say about his intelligence, his skin tone, or the rug he's currently wearing."_

_Lydia turns, facing the cameras more squarely. Deliberately, and in front of tens of watchers that would become millions in the hours to come as the video goes viral, she drops her hands. They lengthen into claws and her eyes flash a deep, glowing red. When she smiles, it's all fang and certainty. Beside her, Derek's eyes glow blue and he snarls. One by one down the aisle, ten men and women show their claws. Outside, in the sprawl of Chicago, something begins to howl. Another follows, and then another, and another until the individual voices can't be picked out. Ten pairs of eyes gleam inhumanly bright in shades of yellow and blue._

_People are too frozen to scream, and Lydia smiles sweetly and turns back to Dr. Raymond. She holds her hand out. "I'll take my medal, now. We'll be holding a press conference in front of the downtown Hyatt in one hour, where I will field questions from media outlets that matter, and ignore the ones that don't. You, Keith, will explain exactly how you stole from me now. I wouldn't suggest lying."_

_On her way out of the ballroom hosting the event, Boyd takes up Jackson's abandoned spot at her side as he and Derek hang back, watching Dr. Raymond began to stammer through the true story, a wet stain spreading across the front of Raymond's neatly pressed trousers. "You just changed the world, you know," he says._

_Lydia shrugs and clutches her medal as she and her pack began the walk back to the front of the Hyatt. "I'm improving it." She'd always planned to change the world. This might not have been her plan A, but she's nothing if not adaptable. "I'm the youngest ever winner of the Fields medal, you know," she informs him._

_His eyes still gleam as he smiles at her. "You didn't technically win."_

_She smiles. "Yes I did." They just hadn't realized it yet._

_Dr. Endo's final speech of the evening is anticlimactic. No one films it. Lydia later sends Dr. Endo flowers for upstaging, but does not apologize._  
***

For two weeks after Jackson died and then came back nothing made sense. Jackson was wary and quiet and so, so broken. They'd learned how to have sex and how to tease and how to spend time together when they'd dated, but neither of them had really learned how to _talk_. Lydia jumped at every shadow and her head still felt strange with all the lost time leaving hollow spaces inside of it. Jackson flinched when he looked in the mirror, and he clung to her side like he couldn't stand to be alone in a room with just his own memories to keep him company. Every conversation they tried to have about werewolves and murders or how they felt ended with one or the other of them tripping over words and putting a halt to it, leaving everything unsaid.

After two weeks though, she'd had enough. Lydia left Jackson to his parents for a weekend and let herself into Allison's house. Jackson was an open wound who could bleed at any moment, and it left Lydia strangely incapable of being angry at him. Allison, however, she could be furious with. And Allison had lost her mother, and run so far off the rails she barely recognized herself - so she could be angry back.

Lydia rarely lost an argument, and this one wasn't any exception, but by the end of it, Allison was in tears, and Lydia's arms were around her, and if things weren't quite forgiven, it was still a start. When Allison promised to never keep secrets again, Lydia believed that she meant it - at least in the moment.

Lydia spent a day and a half at Allison's house, reading through her family's bestiary and asking questions. When Allison ran out of answers, Lydia let Mr. Argent fix them dinner, and talked about a school project they were allegedly working on. Over chicken casserole she asked him why there was so much variance in the documented reactions to Wolfsbane amongst werewolf populations, not giving him any time to adjust to the change in topics and pressing until he gave up trying to evade. Lydia was thorough and relentless and Allison encouraged her father to talk. By the time she left their house she had a scanned copy of the Bestiary (a handwritten journal, it was like research via the 1950's, she felt like she should have a poodle skirt and a plucky girl reporter pair of glasses), a flash drive full of more modern notes, and a better idea of what she still needed to know.

Her next stop was Stiles, who was easier to crack but had a much less reliable wealth of information he'd culled from the web. She filtered through dubiously sourced information about pack behavior and instinct and a few dozen other topics, bullied the name of the doctor he'd gotten the most reputable info from, and copied all of his files. As a reward for his cooperation, she pretended not to notice the carefully passworded files he steered her away from. Lydia knew a porn stash when she saw it.

She talked to Isaac Lahey and to Scott McCall. (Jackson wasn't thrilled, but she didn't care.) She learned everything they knew, and that their breadth of knowledge was extraordinarily unimpressive. Scott steered her toward the veterinarian, so she brought Prada in for an unnecessary checkup and then let herself into the back room and talked him into giving her samples of Mountain Ash and anything else he had. She left with a bag of new organic dog food for Prada, a sheaf of photocopied papers, and a flash drive of yet more files.

Lydia took a week to parse through it all. She re-translated the Latin when it looked inept (it usually did), and double checked the sifted information and borrowed files against one another, assembling as much truth as she could. Through it all, she told Jackson that it would be fine, and to trust her. The fact that he listened said more about how bad a place he was in than anything else could have. 

It was a dismal, rainy weekend when she decided she'd gotten as far as she could. She called Danny and pushed him into a chair in Jackson's living room to play video games with him and left him to it. Danny let her get away with it, but she knew there were only so many times she could enlist him to help keep Jackson from being left alone before he'd want answers Jackson wouldn't give him. She planned on that happening, too. But she had an agenda.

The old Hale house was still a burned out wreckage, and Lydia had better things to do than stand around in rubble. She'd enlisted Isaac the day before and had him take a message for her. 

Her mother was away, and Lydia was less than surprised when she let herself into what should have been an empty house to find Peter Hale already there instead. He was sprawled in a love seat with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Kindle in the other. "I thought you'd be later," he said, finishing his page and then looking up. "You are generally the sort of girl to make an entrance, aren't you?"

Lydia hung her coat on the rack and scooped up Prada as he ran from his hiding place beneath the coffee table. She kissed his cold little nose and pushed him into the dining room, shutting him in before she bothered to answer. "If I ever call you again, you wait for me outside."

Peter smirked. "So there might be a second date? Be still my heart."

Lydia stared at him. For a second, she remembered the weeks she'd spent in fear. She remembered not knowing anything, and how it had felt to be the one forever left in the dark. She shivered, crossing her arms over her chest. She was never going to feel that again. "You owe me," she said.

Peter considered that, and finally nodded. "To a point," he agreed.

Her eyes narrowed. "Without me, you'd be a rotting corpse in the ground. If there's a point, I decide where it is."

Peter smiled, showing too many teeth bared and too-bright eyes. "And I could have repaid you by killing you. I didn't. Lets both concede that was a gift on my part."

"No," she said. If he'd wanted to kill her, he could have. The fact that he hadn't just meant he hadn't wanted to - not that he was being merciful. 

He studied her, and then smiled again, and it was less sharp. "What do you want, Lydia?"

She dropped down onto the sofa opposite him, crossing her legs and folding her hands into her lap primly. "Information. I've already talked to everyone else who knows anything, but clueless teenagers and a book of notes on how to kill werewolves doesn't round out my education as well as I'd like."

He laughed, and sat back, mirroring her pose. "I'm all yours."

Lydia wrinkled her nose to show what she thought of that, but didn't hesitate. "Because of you, I was ignorant, ostracized and terrorized for weeks, which was followed by you and your nephew almost killing my boyfriend."

"Who was a murderous snake at the time," Peter pointed out.

Lydia went on as if he hadn't spoken. "None of that is going to happen again. I'm going to know everything I need to know, and you're going to tell me everything I ask. Tell me how the Pack works."

Peter cocked his head. "Feeling it, is he?" It wasn't entirely about Jackson, but Lydia let him believe it was and nodded. "Pack members can't live alone. The life of an Omega is sad, weak, and tragically short. They spend their days feeling cut off from their own nature until they snap, or some Hunter cuts them in half. Having a Pack means a steady source of strength, and a place to belong. It can't be explained. It can only be felt. Humans, with their existential dilemmas and weekly therapy sessions, can't know what it's like. And you, Lydia, will never be able to feel it. Immunity does have its downsides." Peter leaned forward. "I consider that a shame, by the way. You would be an impressive wolf."

Lydia pursed her lips, and then tossed her hair - calculated and careful. "No one ever tells me I can't do something. It's embarrassing for them when I prove them wrong. And saying something can't be explained is just lazy. Everything can be explained, if you look hard enough, and if you're smart enough, there are always answers. I am smarter than you know, and not at all lazy. So keep talking." She smiled. "And for the record - I strongly believe you would benefit from prolonged weekly therapy."

Peter looked amused, and Lydia wanted to scratch out his eyes, but she sat still. "Don't you want to take notes then, schoolgirl?"

"I'll remember," Lydia told him. "Tell me about the Pack."

Peter laughed. "I'll make an attempt. I'll assume for a moment that you had a blue-blooded, American cinematic-style upbringing. Remember when you were a little girl in pigtails, learning to ride your bike? Everything felt wobbly and strange, but your father was running alongside of you, so you knew you were safe and nothing could touch you?"

"I had rollerblades," Lydia said.

"Fair enough. But imagine that feeling, then. When you first pedaled with your chubby little legs and the bike stayed up, and you realized you were on your own, but it was all right, because your father was still behind you, and he taught you how to do this. Even if you fall, you knew how it worked now. You knew you could get back up and keep going." Peter sat back, hands spreading. "A wolf without a Pack had no father and was thrown onto a bike and pushed down a hill and is forever waiting for the crash, getting more and more afraid of the fall until even if someone tried to help them stop, an Omega would snap their neck for it because all they see is the fall, and all they feel is the fear and the solitude."

Lydia considered that. "That's what it's like for Jackson?"

Peter snorted. "No. That's what it's like for McCall and the social outcasts my nephew gave the Bite to without providing them a real Alpha. They have no guidance. No, for Jackson it was having training wheels and someone who lied about how it worked. Someone told him you just had to sit, and let the bike do the work. He had a Master because he had no sense of self, and because he needed someone to guide him. You reminded him of his heart - it was very touching, by the way - but that doesn't change the nature that left him open to it in the first place. The wolves who need an Alpha the worst are invariably the ones who think they don't need it at all." Peter's mouth quirked. "Or the ones who think they can become one when they weren't meant for it."

"From all reports, you were insane and not remarkably clever when you were an Alpha," Lydia pointed out.

Peter smiled again. "I never claimed to be suited to it, either. If I had wanted it, I could have taken it back."

"I assumed that was because the Alpha Pack would be targeting an Alpha, and you didn't want to be first on their hit-list," Lydia said.

Peter laughed at that. "You're entirely too clever for high school. I admit, that might have been a consideration."

More than a minor consideration, Lydia would bet. She let it go for now. "Keep talking." Peter obliged, talking in a dry, even way about the facts of werewolf life. Lydia listened, pressing him for clarity and answers. 

Before he left she used a kit Scott had gotten from his mother and Dr. Deaton had shown her how to use and drew five vials of blood. Peter let her, docile and watchful. When she told him to get out and not come back inside unless he was invited, he laughed and left.

Lydia let Prada back out and hugged him to her chest, hands shaking a little. When it subsided, she pulled out her laptop and began typing up notes while they were still fresh in her head.  
***

Lydia dragged her nails down Jackson's chest and leaned down, biting sharp and pointed against his throat, worrying the skin between her teeth until he whimpered, his hands curling at her hips. "Lyd-" he said, voice ragged and breathless.

She hushed him, hips rocking down against him in a slow slide. "I'm here," she said. Lydia didn't know how to tell him things. She didn't know what questions he needed to be asked, and what Jackson needed her to leave buried and unsaid. But she knew this. She knew how to drag him out on a slow string until he snapped beneath her and turned pleading and desperate.

She'd never used it to try to make him talk, but she was armed with Peter's voice in her head now, and when she rocked down against him again, her teeth caught on his lip before she asked. "What do you want?"

"You," he answered, easy and instant - the way you answered a question when you thought you knew what answer they wanted to hear.

She stilled. "What else?" she asked. Jackson's blue eyes met hers and he shook his head, confused. Lydia cut him off before he could claim not to understand. " _Who_ else, Jackson? What else do you need when you're looking out the window, away from me? When you can't sleep no matter how tired you are?" She'd danced around this before, and never gotten anywhere. Lydia understood better now. There were no evasions left for Jackson to use, and she knew him too well to accept his default retreat into asshole.

He made a choked sound, face twisting up into an expression of anger that was easier for him than fear. "What are you talking about? Listen, just get off me if you're not going to-"

"Stop," she said. She'd read, and she'd listened. Lydia wasn't a wolf, but she put a growl in her voice and as much iron as she could in the eyes she locked with his, the hands pressing against his shoulders. "Just stop. Tell me. Tell me the truth, Jackson."

Lydia caught his hand, drawing it down and pressing it against her skin, beneath the silken underwear and into the slick, waiting heat. She let herself shudder, visible and easily, as his fingers moved automatically. She kept her eyes still on his, not letting him look away. She wasn't Pack. But between them, it had always been Lydia who set the terms. The Bite wouldn't change that unless she let it. "I'm yours," she said, a reminder and a promise that she couldn't bring herself to verbalize more strongly than that. "It's okay, Jackson. Just tell me. Tell me what else you need. Tell me, so I can give it to you."

Jackson looked wounded, the way he had in the days after his death. Hurt, and frustrated and broken and full of self loathing. "What I wanted made me weak enough to be some asshole's puppet," he said, almost too quiet for her to hear. "I don't know why you came back for me."

She touched the key on a chain around his neck, brief and soft. "Yes, you do." Lydia shook her head firmly. "That's not why, Jackson. It wasn't weakness. It's because he was twisted, and you didn't know how much better than him you are, even though you should have. I know now, and so do you. And I'm _not_ him. I have you. I'll always have you, and I'll never use it to hurt you."

Jackson laughed, slightly hysterical. "You used to threaten to dump me if I lost a game."

"I never meant it, much. And things are different now. We're both different, but not in the ways that matter. Just answer me, Jackson. I'll make it work. But you have to say it. This once, I need you to tell me." Lydia had thought she meant it, back then. She'd worked hard to be as shallow and self-serving as she seemed. The last few months had broken her illusions the same way they had Jackson's.

Jackson shut his eyes finally, teeth worrying at his own lip until Lydia licked it, reclaiming it for her own. "I can't-" He pulled his hand away, clenching it into the sheets. Lydia watched the cost of that word ripple over his face. _Can't_. It was a word neither of them knew how to accept. She let him work through it. "I don't know," he finally said. His voice was angry and apologetic and resentful, all at once. But it was honest.

Lydia hummed approval and she slid down his chest, mouth painting lipsticked kisses beneath each nipple. "I do," she said.

He opened his eyes, watching her as she slowly worked open his jeans and methodically prodded him into lifting enough for her to strip them off. "You know?" he asked.

Lydia snorted, delicate and dismissive. "Don't I always know?"

His smile was small and fond. "You know everything. Or at least you think you do."

"I don't know everything. But there's nothing I can't learn." She met his eyes again. "If there's something you need, I'd learn about it. And I'd give it to you. Do you trust me?"

Her tongue flicked out, dragging a line along the hard length of him, and Jackson groaned. "Your teeth are too close to my dick for me to say I don't trust you," he ground out.

"But you trust me anyway," she said. He didn't deny it. It was, for them, the same as agreeing. Lydia parted her lips and swallowed him down. His hand slid into her hair. Lydia growled a soft warning when he pulled too hard, and another when he didn't pull hard enough. Both times he listened. When he came, his eyes flashed inhumanly blue, and when she climbed up his body to straddle him as his tongue snaked inside her, he didn't try to dislodge the knees that pinned his arms to the bed.

They curled together afterward, Jackson's face in her neck and her hand on his stomach. "I smell like you," he said into the sweat-damp curtain of her hair.

When Lydia kissed him, she thought she could taste herself. "No, you smell like mine," she corrected softly. Jackson didn't answer, but he drew her in closer and she shut her eyes, breathing in the scent of them both and imagining what it would smell like if she were a wolf instead of the girl who couldn't become one. "If you ever really think I'm wrong, you just have to tell me," she said into the quiet.

She felt Jackson's smile against her skin. "Like a safeword? Kinky. Did you read those 50 Shades books?"

Lydia swatted at his shoulder. "Something like that, yes."

"Key," Jackson mumbled softly. "That's the word."

Lydia stilled and felt a warmth in her chest that made it hard to breathe. "Key," she agreed thickly.  
***

"You have no social skills, smell like ashes and shame, and don't own anything worth owning aside from a phallic car you spend suspicious amounts of time polishing," Lydia said, looking out over the battered train car Derek - for reasons she couldn't begin to fathom - seemed to occupy. "There are rats with too much dignity to live like this."

"He's also barely computer literate and never got his G.E.D.," Peter said from where he slouched in the rearmost seat, earbuds in one ear and a laptop open on his knees.

Lydia ignored him, watching the flex of Derek's jaw instead. "You need a Pack."

"I have a Pack," Derek answered flatly.

"You have two missing Pack members, a dysfunctional teenager suffering from serious PTSD, a psychotic undead uncle, and McCall. That's not a Pack, it's an exercise in ineptitude," Lydia argued.

"Why are you here? It's none of your business," Derek ground out.

"You bit Jackson, and Jackson is mine. That makes it my business. That and being forced to play necromancer for your dead family after he used me as a chew toy ensures that I'm invested now." Lydia leaned forward, crowding into Derek's space. His eyes dropped to the cleavage on display, and then skittered away guiltily as he swung off of the bench he'd been perched on, pacing down the train aisle instead. "You're making things worse," she told him.

"The lady has a point," Peter drawled.

Lydia didn't look at him, but Derek glared. Lydia's breezy _shut up_ came at the same moment as Derek's growl. Lydia wasn't sure which it was that actually made Peter fall quiet. "I can handle it," Derek said.

"Maybe, but past history says probably not." Lydia licked her lips. "You were never meant to be an Alpha. I know the story. And there's a whole Pack in town who think they can prove it, and take what you have away from you." Derek's jaw clenched harder, but he said nothing. "I'm willing to help you, despite less than stellar history. You should take my offer."

"You're a human, and immune. There's nothing you can do. I didn't ask for your help."

"That's just more proof that you need it." Lydia stood. She had years of high school hallways under her belt. She knew how to hold her chin and set her shoulders to ensure that when she walked, the crowds parted around her and everyone took notice. She pulled that armor around her and stepped toward Derek. For a second, he leaned back, giving way. He caught it, stood firm - but Lydia saw. "You need a Pack, a real Pack. I'll give you one. I'll help you. Jackson's mine, but I'll let you borrow him. I'll bring you McCall and Lahey, and help you keep them, and tell you who to offer the Bite - since you seem chronically attracted to the desperate and unhinged."

Derek met her eyes, dubious but searching. "Even if I believed you could deliver any of that - why would I believe you would want to?"

"Because I'm giving you what's most important to me. And it's a loan. When I'm ready, you give it back." Derek was silent, and Lydia went on. "How much more damage could I possibly do than what you've done on your own?"

Derek jerked away when Lydia hooked her arm through his, but she ignored it, and the growl that went with it, though it was hard to do without cringing. When she tried again, Derek let her, and when she steered him out of the car and toward the stairs, he walked at her side, shortening his stride to match hers. "Jackson is a wolf," Lydia said quietly. "He needs a Pack. Let me help you build him one." She squeezed his arm and met his eyes again. "You never wanted this, did you? To be in charge? I read the Argent histories. They thought you would end up an Omega, if not for Laura. You're wearing someone else's skin, and it doesn't suit you. But that doesn't mean you can't belong to something."

For a moment, Lydia thought Derek wouldn't answer at all, again. But finally he shook his head slowly. She wasn't sure which of that he was answering - but it was a start. Lydia patted his arm and leaned up, kissing his cheek. She still smelled like Jackson, and Lydia knew it, had calculated it. She saw that way his nostrils flared as he drew in her scent like it was something precious and faraway. Alphas needed their Pack as badly as their Pack needed them. Lydia wasn't above using every tool in her box, if she needed it.

She let him go. "Dinner. At my house, next weekend. I'll text you the time. And bring any financial records with you. We're going to start planning renovations, and I need to know my budget so I can tell you how pitifully inadequate it is."

Derek stared at her like she was a foreign species as Lydia climbed the stairs back toward the daylight and her waiting car. Because he opened the driver's door for her, Lydia decided to wait until another time to bring up the benefits of eyebrow-plucking with him.  
***

Danny opened the door to find Lydia Martin on his doorstep, holding a bag with two of the cranberry scones he liked best, and two lattes. "Who died?" he asked, automatically, and then winced as soon as he had, realizing the bad taste that particular question was in.

Lydia didn't call him on it, save for a long look and a lifted eyebrow. "Jackson's fine," she said instead. "We need to talk." Lydia and Danny were friends in the way that they had both circled the same person. Danny was Jackson's best friend, Lydia was his girlfriend. And Danny was smart and sensible and a good deal nicer than either Jackson or Lydia, which Lydia had found useful to have around, now and then. They got along well enough.

But she'd never just shown up at his doorstep with pastries and edicts. Danny was understandably suspicious. But beneath that was something wary but hopeful. Lydia knew how Jackson had been pulling away from Danny because the bastard had done the same thing to her, before the night he died. She knew what it felt like to be on the outside, and while she had ulterior motives - that _was_ one of the reasons she was here. Danny wasn't directly hers, but he was her people, and Lydia looked after her own, in her way. 

Danny's parents were out (she'd checked), and his little sister was at cheerleading practice, which left the house quiet and empty when Danny led her through and motioned for her to sit at the chair behind his desk. Danny dropped down to sit on the edge of his bed, waiting with an expectant patience that Jackson (or Lydia) would never have managed. 

Lydia reached into her bag and pulled out her Ipad, pulling up a video and then handing it to Danny. "Jackson is a werewolf. So is McCall. That's what they've been hiding," she said, deliberately blasé, as if she hadn't said something impossible to believe.

Danny watched the footage Lydia had taken of Jackson reluctantly changing for her. She'd knit together shots of McCall, Jackson, Lahey, and even one of Derek with his red eyes and full wolf. Only Peter had taken the time to smile and mug for the camera. Lydia had cut him out entirely. Danny stared. "If this is a joke, I'm not getting the punchline," he finally said gruffly.

"It's not. And you already know it's not. You've seen what's been going on in this town. You know Jackson, you watched McCall go from useless to Captain. And him and Stiles aren't exactly subtle when they sit in class mumbling about fur and claws and blah blah, Allison, blah blah, Hunters. . . this isn't a joke. It's just sense. And now you can put it together."

Danny swallowed. Lydia had known he'd believe because werewolves made more sense than 'town gone crazy'. She took out a spare flash drive and handed it to him. "This is everything I know about werewolves. You can ask Jackson what it's like, but don't ask him what's been going on the last few months. Not yet."

"He's my best friend, I can ask him what I want to, Lydia," Danny answered.

She cocked her head. "You could. But it wouldn't do any good. He's not ready yet. When he is, then you can talk." 

Danny was quiet, but finally he just looked at her. "Why show me now, when he obviously still doesn't want me to know?"

He sounded hurt, but Lydia ignored that. They could work out bruised feelings amongst themselves later. "Because you needed to know. Because Jackson misses you, and doesn't know how to fix it. Because he needs a Pack, and the one he has is incompetent. He was trying to protect you, and then he didn't know where to go from there."

"A Pack?" Danny looked dubious.

"Wolves are pack creatures. Take that away, and they flounder. Jackson is trying to find a space, but I don't trust them with him, not without someone who cares about him. You care about him. You're also not a complete idiot. You could help us," Lydia said. "And you're not sensible enough that you wouldn't want superpowers."

"You want me to let Jackson turn me into a werewolf so I can look after him?"

"No, it doesn't work like that. Derek Hale has to bite you," Lydia said. "But pretty much. If it helps, Derek Hale is hot in a neanderthal, never-met-a-pair-of-tweezers sort of way."

"Lydia. . . I don't even know what to say to this. You just threw 'werewolves' on my door and expect me to keep up! Until a week ago, I thought 'Derek Hale' was Stiles' cousin Miguel. . . or I was supposed to think that, anyway," Danny argued. "What the hell am I supposed to do with this?" Danny looked away and swallowed. "He died and came back and I didn't know for two days. He's a fucking werewolf, and I didn't know. He doesn't tell me. He doesn't want me to know. Whatever you think, Jackson doesn't think he needs me."

"Jackson has no idea what he needs. He has me for that," Lydia told him.

"He didn't have you either, for a while. Suddenly you're joined at the hip and you have all the answers?" Danny asked.

"I always had the answers. It's just no one was letting me see the questions." She gestured toward the Ipad in his hands. "Read, watch the video, and ask your own questions. The dangers of the Bite are all in there, so are the benefits. You'd be stronger, faster, have better senses. And claws and fangs and hair, but not enough that it's a fashion detriment." Lydia paused, watching Danny work that through. "And you'd get to be _with_ Jackson."

Danny heard the emphasis, and his head snapped up from where he'd been reviewing the footage. "I don't-"

Lydia held up a hand. "Don't give me the 'not my type'. I've heard it. I've also seen your exes. They're basically all Jackson-lite. You want him. He needs you. This will work for both of you."

Danny swallowed. "He's your boyfriend."

"True."

"He's straight."

"Less true."

"If he needs other werewolves, why not you?"

Lydia drummed her fingers against the chair. "It will be me, eventually. But for now, it can't be. I trust you to take care of him, and do what I can't yet." She stood, leaving both coffees (they were both for him, anyway, Danny mainlined caffeine when he was caused on something.) "Just watch. Decide, and then go talk to him. When you decide to do it, come to dinner at my house on Saturday."

"He's not in love with me. He loves you." Danny said quietly.

"You're not in love with him, either. That doesn't mean you don't love him. And Jackson is emotionally incompetent anyway," Lydia told him.

Danny choked out a startled laugh. "So are you."

She didn't bother to deny it. "Call me if you have questions. Or call Stilinski, if you want. But pretty much everything he knows, or thinks he knows, is in the files."

She left Danny watching the moment where Jackson changed over and over on a loop. She made a mental note to send Jackson to retrieve her Ipad, tomorrow.  
***

It was easier than she expected.

Lydia could, and frequently did, plan down to the most minute of details. But a predisposition toward planning didn't mean she wasn't capable of improv. Some things just didn't let themselves be entirely mapped out, no matter how much attention one put into planning the logistics.

She'd weighted the tables toward Danny, but he wasn't ready to be bitten yet. After that, she'd figured Lahey had the least history with Jackson, which would make him an easy place to start. But history wasn't always a bad thing, and she'd forgotten to factor that in.

Lydia also hadn't counted on just how much animosity various werewolves were harboring for Allison. Lahey recoiled at the sight of her, and the younger Hale watched her like she was a bomb that might go off. (Peter was a different equation altogether, and not one Lydia was planning to bring in any time soon.)

But Scott - Scott still loved Allison. He'd forgive her anything. And Jackson didn't blame her for the things he'd done, or the things done to him, so the fact that Scott smelled like her didn't bother him the way it did Isaac. And Allison owed Lydia enough to listen to her. She was wracked with guilt and awash in her own demons and grief. Allison didn't need the way Jackson did, but she needed _something_. A week after the first forced-company dinner, Lydia left Derek and Isaac off the next invite list and she, Allison, Jackson, and Scott ate Chinese in front of the TV. Halfway through _The Devil Wears Prada_ , Lydia kissed Allison.

Allison had been expecting it, and she kissed back. She tasted of watermelon lipgloss Lydia didn't like, and something else that she did like but couldn't name. It was slow and soft and hyper-aware of the audience they had, but it wasn't a demonstration for their benefit alone. It was an opening pitch - leaving the field wide open. 

Jackson shifted closer to her, hand on her thigh as he looked up at Lydia from where he sat on the floor in front of her. "Come here," she said, and she kissed him too, trading lipgloss and licking into his mouth slow and deep and hungry. When it broke, Jackson's eyes were huge and his fingers were tight on her thigh and the look he gave he was a question he didn't know how to verbalize.

Lydia ran her fingers through his short hair. "It's okay," she said. Two fingers touched his throat when he swallowed, moving with the bob of his Adam's apple.

Scott was watching, his wide eyes dark and his expression much more confused than Jackson's. (Which wasn't surprising. Lydia thought McCall must probably spend a vast percentage of his life looking cutely confused. It seemed to be his default.) "Allison?" he asked.

Allison shrugged, self conscious but determined. "He's your Pack, or he should be. Lydia's my friend. And we've been together, you and me, I mean. And we've been apart. Now we're together again and I've done. . . I need things to be different, this time. I think you do, too. So lets be different. Things go wrong when it's just us, Scott. Lets try something new." She smiled wryly. "Besides - I can tell you like the idea as much as I do."

"We are both smoking hot, in case you forgot," Lydia said blithely.

Scott looked from Allison to Lydia, and then swallowed, gaze skittering away from Jackson. "Jackson _hates_ me," he said. Which. . . actually he figured it out faster than Lydia would have thought. She'd wondered if someone wouldn't have to make him diagrams to convey that this wasn't a girls-only show. 

"That doesn't usually stop Jackson," Lydia said, and Jackson smiled slightly. She scraped her nails across Jackson's scalp and then nudged him gently with a foot. "Kiss him," she said. "Kiss him like you kissed me, when you were still trying to convince me you were good enough for me to date."

Scott looked half a second from bolting, but Allison uncurled from her spot beside Lydia and dropped down to kneel next to Scott, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her chest to his back. 

"Like you needed convincing." Jackson hesitated. "Lyds. . . if-"

"It can't ruin anything. You have me. You'll always have me. This is just an experiment." Lydia leaned down and kissed Jackson again. Her voice was low in his ear when it broke. "It's okay. I want this too. You're allowed. Let me see you want, Jackson."

Her voice was a purr and Jackson shuddered. Lydia loved him like this. She loved him when he was an asshole, and when he swaggered across the field mid-game, and when he slouched in his throne at the lunch table. But she loved him fragile and wide-eyed and wanting, or shivery and panting in aftermath. Lydia loved him when he was cracked open and everything he thought he had to hide showed through. She wondered if that was what he loved about her, but she couldn't see herself the way he did to know for sure.

When Jackson finally moved, it was with a tensed jaw and more purpose than she'd given him credit for. The first kiss was hard and heated and for a second it looked like it might easily turn into shoving and growling and two wolves who didn't know how to give way. 

But then it didn't. One kiss melted into another, and Lydia somehow could see where they clicked together, where the jagged parts of Jackson she couldn't smooth over just softened their edges with Scott. She wanted that - to be Pack, to be able to be anything and everything that Jackson needed. But she wasn't, yet. And she could give him this instead.

Plus, it wasn't exactly unattractive to watch. Lydia hummed her approval and watched as Scott growled low in his throat and pushed in closer. Jackson's head tipped back, throat offered up and hands on Scott's sides. _Scott doesn't know what he is,_ Peter had told her once. Alpha, Beta, Omega - Scott didn't know where he wanted to fit, but there was more Alpha in him than Jackson, and Lydia hadn't weighted that in, either. 

Allison moved away, her breathing soft and heavy beside Lydia where she sat, and her mouth slid against Lydia's neck, her hand cupped her breast and then fled down to her hip. Her head was half turned though, watching their boys. "They look. . ." 

Allison trailed off, and Lydia grinned. "Better than porn," she finished.

Both boys heads lifted at that, blinking in unison at them and Lydia rolled her eyes. "Everyone surfs for porn. It's not a male only interest," she said. Jackson's laugh was soft and Scott's muffled protest about Allison never telling him disappeared as Jackson kissed him again.

Lydia had bought a new throw rug for this, plush and deep on the floor. The vibrant red color was pretty beneath Jackson as Scott pushed him onto his back, curling over him as Jackson clutched at his sides. Scott buried his nose against Jackson's neck, and Jackson's pressed into his shoulder, both sets of eyes closing and breathing in deep. They welded together, scenting each other, and Allison made a soft noise from beside Lydia. "I didn't know he needed. . ." Needed Pack, needed closeness, Allison didn't say, but they both saw it now. It was all too obvious as they whimpered and kissed and clung in ways that had as much to do with closeness as it did sex.

"Neither did he," Lydia said. She turned her head and kissed Allison again, then slid down to the floor, pillowing Jackson's head on her thigh. "I'll teach you how to touch him," she told Scott, who flushed but nodded after a covert glance at Allison. "And I'll tell you when you're allowed to," she added.

Scott's eyes were faintly gold and he was trembling where he hovered over Jackson. Lydia began to open Jackson's shirt, button by button, and Scott made a sound she couldn't recognize, because he was a wolf, but he wasn't _her_ wolf, and she didn't have all the tools available to her yet. Allison understood though, and she smiled, her hands sliding under Scott's shirt, pulling it off too and murmuring in his ear, soft and encouraging though the actual words she used were lost to the thud of Lydia's own pulse in her ears and the harsh sound of breathing. 

Scott swallowed again, shivering beneath Allison's mouth on his shoulder blade, and then looked at Jackson. "Jackson. . . you don't have to. . . I mean this isn't. . . if you don't want-"

"He wants," Lydia said. She saw the stubborn set of Scott's jaw though and laughed, leaning over Jackson and kissing him, upside down and deep, her nails raking a soft line along his stomach, down over the hard bulge of his cock in his jeans. "Tell him you want it," she said. Jackson fought the words in his throat, and Lydia hummed. "Jackson, you're in a hot threesome with two girls, at the very least. No one would say no, even if McCall is here too." She grinned at Scott's pout, and Lydia dropped her voice, deliberately throaty and enticing. "And look how much he wants you. We all want you. I can feel how much you want him." Jackson was panting harshly through his nose, and Lydia met Scott's gold-tinged eyes, and added - conversational and throaty at once. "Handy thing about teenage werewolves - they're always good for more than one round. I bet you and Allison already figured that out. Jackson looks amazing, spread out on my bed and fucked wide open with a strap on. He comes like that, and I don't even have to do anything else, and then I climb on top of him and he stays hard. Sometimes-"

"Jesus," Allison gasped, and Scott whimpered.

"Lyd-" Jackson said at the same time, urgent and embarrassed.

Lydia hushed him and kissed him again. "Look at them. There's nothing wrong with it."

" _Nothing_ wrong," Allison echoed thickly. 

Lydia grinned and rewarded her, not immune to the rush of feeling that came with the knowledge that they were all taking her lead in this. She hadn't been nearly as certain as she pretended. But now they were here, and it was hot and perfect. "You should take his pants off."

She didn't specify if she meant Jackson or Scott, but Allison took the initiative, and her fingers were light on Jackson's fly, but didn't shy away from touching, either. Scott tensed for a moment, and then something in him seemed to roll over, because he shuddered and then leaned down to kiss Jackson again. Jackson took it, hips straining into Allison's touch and mouth opening beneath Scott's. When Scott lifted his head, Lydia leaned in, mouth slick and warm against his, tongue tangling against Jackson's. Lydia met Allison's eyes, and Lydia saw permission there, gave her the same. In seconds, Jackson was stripped and Lydia was breathless and reaching for Scott's fly. She squeezed the hard line of his dick through the hideous, cheap jeans he wore and leaned down enough that Jackson's searching fingers could cup her breasts, and then slip up to unhook her bra one-handed.

When they all came up for air, Allison was laughing. "You should teach Scott that - I always end up getting it for him."

Jackson grinned, cocky and swollen-mouthed. "I've got moves McCall can never match."

Scott grunted. "Prove it," he snapped, and then looked slightly surprised at himself for having done it.

Jackson looked at Lydia a last time and at her nod, he crawled up onto his knees, finishing the job Lydia had started and stripping Scott of his clothes while Scott hesitantly lifted Lydia's blouse off and Allison shimmied down to her underwear. Scott's hands were soft and careful against Lydia's skin, the palm broader than Jackson's but the tips of his fingers rougher, leaving goosebumps against the curve of her breasts when he touched.

Lydia curled over Jackson's back, kissing her way along his spine and watching as his mouth worked its way down Scott's chest. Scott didn't know where to touch, hands restless on Jackson's shoulders, Allison's stomach once Lydia leaned out of his reach. Lydia watched Scott shudder, all over and sudden, when Jackson's head abruptly dipped lower and his tongue licked along the length of Scott's cock, shamelessly eager in a way Lydia had only seen in Jackson when he wanted too much and had his head pressed between her thighs. 

Scott groaned, and then Allison echoed him, softer and more breathless. Lydia tore her eyes away from where Jackson's tongue was pink against the reddened flush of Scott's dick, and she saw where Scott's hand had dipped and pressed into Allison's panties, making her bite down on her lip and then nudge her knees wider. "Oh god," Lydia said aloud, pressing her own thighs together, aching and so turned on she was suddenly having trouble remembering just how she'd planned for this to go.

Allison smirked a little. "So, you're not always so collected, huh?" 

Jackson lifted his head and snorted. "Give her a second, she'll go back to giving orders."

Lydia blushed, but her nails dug a little sharply into Jackson's back, and then she smacked him pertly on his ass. He grinned, but she didn't miss the shiver that went with it. Scott's nostrils flared, drawing in the scent of all of them, the arousal that probably littered the air, making him and Jackson drunk on the smell of it. She saw the way his eyes followed her hand as it curled over Jackson's ass, and Lydia grinned and crooked a finger at Allison. "They're busy. Come here."

Lydia settled behind Jackson and kissed the curve of his spine again. "Don't let him come," she said softly.

Jackson nodded, and though his cheeks were a blotched shade of red, he moved easily as she nudged him up onto his knees, his head still down to lick and suck at Scott's cock ass in the air as Lydia reached beneath the sofa for the little zipper pouch she'd left there. Jackson had never sucked anything but the plastic of her toys, but he never did anything without knowing he'd be good at it. She pulled out lube and condoms as Scott made guttural noises and wrapped a hand tight around Jackson's neck, fighting not to drag the teasing mouth further onto his cock. "You can do this for Scott later," she told Allison. She slicked her fingers generously and then teased them around Jackson's hole, methodical and knowing. Allison slid her fingers into her own panties, working them against herself and then just pulling the thin fabric off altogether. She watched, fascinated as Lydia began to work Jackson open. When Allison pulled her fingers free they were shiny-slick and Allison leaned across Jackson, pressing them into Scott's mouth. He sucked instantly, hips rocking into Jackson's mouth until Jackson pulled back again, making Scott growl around Allison's fingers before she pulled them free.

Lydia knew how to turn Jackson inside out like this, and her fingers worked ruthlessly. Jackson began to make a stuttered whine whenever his mouth wasn't busy. Lydia was so intent on what she was doing, on the picture they made, that she was surprised when Allison's fingers slid down her belly to press against her instead, working against her clit. Lydia's fingers paused, three deep into Jackson and making him curse as she kissed Allison again, let the other girl guide her out of the skirt and panties she still wore until she was as naked as the rest of them.

She pulled her fingers free, wiping them on the cloths she'd had packed in her pouch (never let it be said she didn't know how to prepare), and then squeezed out some more lube onto Allison's fingers this time. "Here," she coaxed, using one finger to guide Allison's inside of Jackson, show her where to press and how to twist until Jackson's hands were clawing at the plush rug and Scott was saying Allison's name in a low, pained tone that sounded half like worship and half like complaint. 

Allison took to it with glee, fingers teasing and taking over when Lydia pulled hers free. "Later," Lydia told Scott playfully, "it will be you she's making howl like that. Until someone fucks you. Jackson, maybe. Or Isaac? You'll like it just as much." 

Scott gaped at her, and then groaned. "Why are you. . . this isn't normal," he said.

Allison stopped, and then she shrugged. "We're never going to be normal. And this is good, isn't it? Doesn't it feel right?"

"Or almost right," Lydia interjected. "There's a few missing members."

Scott didn't answer, but when Lydia crawled up to where Jackson had given up all pretense of sucking in favor of panting and rocking back toward Allison's still fingers, Scott's hand cupped Lydia's chin, and then ran through her hair. "Stiles is going to kill me," he whispered, but he smiled and leaned in to kiss her. 

"He'll get his," Lydia said against his lips, and then she was pulling away, nudging Jackson to sit up as Allison sat back. Lydia handed her a condom and kept one for herself. She rolled it onto Jackson as Allison crawled into Scott's lap. Lydia left them to make out for a minute, hearing murmured words of love and reassurance as Lydia pulled Jackson up and lay down beneath him, letting Jackson touch her, grind against her. "When they're done," she told him, "Scott's going to fuck you. And Allison is going to be patient and watch and then one of you is going to reward her for it. Or I will. But first you're both going to come. No use having werewolf recovery times and not using it."

Allison laughed, but Scott dropped his head to her shoulder, catching her hand before she could roll a condom on. "Wait. I can't just. . . I need to know that you want this. That he wants this," he told Allison earnestly. 

Lydia refrained from rolling her eyes. She just ran her hand along Scott's thigh. "Just ask him. Tell him you want it, Jackson." She saw Scott's frown and amended gently. "If you want it, tell him."

Allison kissed at Scott's jaw. "I want to watch, Scott. I want this to work."

Scott nodded, but he waited, stubborn and determined until Jackson lifted his head from where it had been licking at Lydia's breast. "I want it," he gritted out when she prompted him gently. "Don't let it go to your head, McCall."

Lydia laughed and pulled him into a kiss as Allison rolled the condom over Scott. A shuffle of limbs and position and Lydia found Allison's thighs beneath her head, her hands on Lydia's shoulders as Scott moved behind Jackson. Lydia's thighs inched up Jackson's sides and she felt a cry pull from her as Jackson sank inside her. She watched the arch of his back and the rock of Scott's hips as he pressed inside Jackson. 

It clicked, somehow. With all of them in place, Lydia could just let go. The parts that should by rights have been awkward just seemed to give way to rhythm and heat too quickly to be recognized. Lydia let it turn into a blur of thrusts and hands and touching. Jackson's silence gave way into ragged, wordless begging that she silenced with her mouth again and again. She watched Allison lean in to kiss him when Lydia didn't, or met Allison's mouth with her own. She could see Scott as he moved, bent over Jackson, mouth pressing against his skin, or leaning across him to meet Allison's. When Lydia reached a hand it could slide against Scott's side, down his thigh. Every thrust of Scott's pressed Jackson deep inside her, rocked her head against Allison's thigh, as if Scott was fucking all of them along with Jackson. 

Lydia caught one of Jackson's hands, dragging it over her head and pressing it against the wet heat of Allison. He took the direction, fingers rubbing against her, making her thigh quiver beneath Lydia's head. Jackson's other hand was braced against the floor, and it was Lydia who was free to touch, who could watch Jackson's face, see the curtain of Allison's hair and the look on Scott's face as he fucked Jackson. Lydia could see everything, and when Jackson gasped, hoarse and sudden, muscles going taut and strained as he came, dragging Scott with him, all it took was Lydia sliding a hand down, working fingers against her clit for a few seconds before it was rolling through her, coming with a cry that vanished into Jackson's mouth.

The three of them panted and Jackson was heavy atop her, Scott pinning him in place. Beneath her, Allison was moaning, fingers working frantically against herself once Jackson's had faltered. Lydia pushed until Jackson moved, shoving Scott off in turn, both of them groaning as they pulled free. She left them to do away with the condoms and focused on Allison. 

It was easy for Lydia to roll over, press her face between Allison's thighs. She'd never done this before, but she knew how she liked it, and like Jackson, Lydia didn't do anything she couldn't do well. Allison's hands buried into Lydia's hair as Lydia's tongue pressed inside her. Lydia followed the sounds Allison made, tongue flicking against sensitive nerves, teeth grazing. She lifted a hand to press fingers inside of Allison. She felt Jackson press up against her side, Scott hover over her, touching Allison as Lydia got her off. 

It didn't take long. Allison shrieked when she came, louder than any of them, and Lydia pulled away, salt taste of Allison on her lips. Jackson licked it from her mouth, Scott finishing when Jackson broke away to breathe.

They tumbled across the rug in an artless sprawl, Lydia tucked between Scott and Jackson, Allison against Jackson's other side, her hand twined with Scott's atop Lydia's stomach. Lydia kissed at Scott's shoulder, tucked in closer to Jackson. "Next time, we get to watch you and Scott," she told Allison. Allison huffed a laugh and she could feel Scott's grin, even if she wasn't looking. 

From the next room there was a soft scuffle of claws, and then a tiny, demanding whine. Lydia slid a lazy hand along Jackson's stomach, trailing fingers through the streaks of come still there. "Go let Prada out," she ordered.

Jackson groaned, grumbling something about the damn dog, but he started to get up. Lydia caught him. "Not you. You." She nudged Scott with a foot, and he blinked, and then got up obediently. Beside her, Jackson beamed and then started to laugh. It sounded lighter than anything she'd heard from him since he died and came back to her.  
***

"You could stay," Stiles said, though he handed over the next carefully folded skirt when Lydia held her hand out for it. "Things are good, right? I mean, yeah some supernatural whatsit tries to kill us every few months, and Derek still does not know how to use his communication skills, and you want to use your oversized brain to go do things - but the boat can stay unrocked."

Lydia tucked the skirt into her carry on bag and shook her head. "I need the labs and resources and willing nerd labor forces at my beck and call."

Stiles grimaced, handing over the next item from the stack on the bed. "Yeah, but I mean you don't have to stay. You could do a semester, come back, classes by satellite, the whole deal. It could be short term leaving, is what I'm saying, instead of a whole year." Lydia stopped packing, leveling a look at him. He fidgeted restlessly, and then got to the point. Finally. "You're only going because you want the Bite. Why? You're already Pack - you're already _running_ the Pack. No one cares if you're human."

"You care," Lydia said. "Obviously."

"I just don't think its necessary. You, me, and Allison are like, the human holdouts and they so need us around, so it's not like we need to prove it by letting Derek sharpen his teeth on our necks."

"I don't need to prove anything to anyone," Lydia said. It was almost true. She didn't _need_ to prove anything. That didn't mean Lydia didn't crave recognition for the things she was capable of. She didn't consider that the same thing.

"Sure," Stiles said, rolling his eyes as if he didn't believe her. "But you don't need the Bite, is what I'm saying."

"I don't need a lot of things, but I still want them." Lydia sank down to perch on the edge of her bed, fingers touching Stiles' for a brief moment before she drew her hand back from his. "I made a plan. I'm sticking to it. There's a place for me at the head of this Pack, and that's what I'll take. Just like there's a trip to Milan in my future once I finish my degree, there's also fangs."

Stiles stared at her, and then he finally asked, quiet and plaintive. "Why?"

Lydia considered. "Because someone said I couldn't, and I like to prove them wrong. Because I'd be good at it. Because it's where I belong. Because no one is ever going to leave me on the outside again. Because I'm not afraid to be the best version of myself, and to adjust my level of expectation when a new higher level becomes available. Because Jackson needs a real Alpha. Because Derek will be happier. Because I can't stand not knowing. Pick a reason. They're all true."

"But things will change. How do you know they won't change for the worse? How do you know the things you like about yourself won't be gone when you turn into a wolf?" Stiles asked, questions rapid and tripping off his tongue.

"I'm not worried about any of those things, Stiles. You are." Stiles flushed, and Lydia shrugged, head tilting. "Just because I don't want to be immune doesn't mean everyone will expect you to want the Bite now."

"Derek already wants me to take it," Stiles said.

"Everyone wants you to take it, even you, half the time. But you get to things in your own time." She smiled slightly. "Besides, humanity comes in handy now and then. Have you seen the face Isaac makes when he has to smell the ancient leftovers left in the fridge before he tosses them? A less sensitive nose isn't a downside." 

"Everything is just. . . good. Mostly. We all do our classes and fight over the remote and have obscene amounts of sex. But you started it. What if you go, and everything just falls apart?" Stiles asked quietly.

Lydia reached out, fingertips running along the curve of his ear before she smacked him smartly on the back of the head. He yelped, and she ignored it. "It is not my job to stick around and mediate your arguments with Derek. I got him to make a move."

Stiles rubbed his head, shooting her a resentful glare. "Dude, you're a wannabe Alpha. That makes all interpersonal relationships your job to manage."

"I'm officially delegating that to Danny. And don't call me dude," Lydia said. 

She finished packing her carry-on as Jackson pushed the door to her room open. His eyes slid between Lydia and Stiles, settling on her with a bleak sort of acceptance. "The rest of your stuff is in the car," he said. He'd even carried it himself instead of getting Danny or Scott to do it. (Scott, mostly. Danny had years of experience in resisting Jackson's wheedling, and had gotten even better at Jackson management since he took the Bite.)

Stiles pushed himself up from the bed. "I'll, uh, go check the flight schedules, see if its delayed or anything," he offered. He wrapped a hesitant hand around Jackson's arm as he left, squeezing reassuringly. Jackson didn't acknowledge it, but didn't shrink away, either.

Lydia crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Jackson, letting him crush her against his chest and pressing soft kisses to his cheeks. "I could come with you," he said.

"You need to be here. Isn't this what I've been setting you up for? You have Scott and Danny, and the others. You're not alone," Lydia said.

Jackson scowled. "It's not the same. They're. . . Pack. You're mine. My. . ."

"Mate," Lydia supplied.

Jackson groaned. "Could you just not say that? Do you have any idea how much that shows up in the porn Stilinski reads?"

Lydia lifted an eyebrow. "Which you know why?"

"He reads it aloud when he's pissed off at something Derek did." He rolled his eyes, expression pained as Lydia laughed. "It's not funny."

"It really is. That's not him being pissed off, that's the least subtle kind of hinting I've ever heard of."

"Lydia . . ." Jackson swallowed. "You'll come back?"

"Always," Lydia said. "And when I do, I'll take the Bite, and everything will be as it should be."

Jackson smiled. "Because you say so?"

"Exactly."

"I love you," Jackson said. Lydia shut her eyes, pressing her face into his chest and hugging tight. He didn't say that usually, and Lydia didn't really need to hear it to know that it was true. But it made her eyes sting and her chest feel tight when he did say it. Jackson hugged her back and swallowed hard. When he spoke again, his voice was shaky, but he sounded like himself, still. "I wouldn't say no to a goodbye blowjob."

Lydia laughed, and they both pretended it didn't sound damp and teary. "I thought you said Scott gives better head than I do?"

"I only said that when you made us watch Project Runway."

"He does give better head," Lydia admitted. "But I have better hands." She slipped her fingers beneath his shirt, tweaking a nipple and then laughing against his mouth as he kissed her.

Ten minutes later they drifted downstairs and toward the door. Her mother sat on the sofa, casting deeply suspicious glances toward the lurking Pack who stood around the living room, or hovered out by the car. "Are you SURE you don't want me to drive you, darling?" she asked. 

Lydia loved her, and she hugged her tight. But she shook her head. "I have a ride, mom." She said her goodbyes, and then they piled into three cars. At the airport, Danny draped his arm across Jackson's shoulders and Scott wrapped his arms around Jackson's waist as Lydia hooked her carry on over one shoulder and waved goodbye. Allison kissed her, and Stiles hugged her like he might not be able to let go until Derek tugged him away. Erica left her spot between Isaac and Boyd to run up at the last minute and hug Lydia too.

On the plane, Lydia stared out her window seat and waved. She couldn't see them, but they could see better than she ever could. Just in case, the last thing she left them with was a broad smile and a wave. In his little crate beneath her seat, Prada whined and Lydia reached down to let him lick her fingers once they were safely in the air.

During the flight she burrowed into the shirt she'd stolen from Jackson and hugged her phone to her chest, flipping through picture after picture of her self-assembled family. She had a plan. One year, and countless hours of research with bio nerds, and she knew it would happen. And then she could go home, and everything would be perfect.  
***

Biology wasn't Lydia's field, but she'd made friends in the right places before she left home. There was a werewolf Bio major named Tania with an overbite and a chronic shy streak who developed a crush on Danny while they were skyping. Her crush transferred handily enough to Lydia. Lydia was armed with blood samples, info, and a sizable donation from her father to Yale's various programs that guaranteed she could always find lab space. She'd do her own work at the lab tables, appropriating white boards and sending emails to her advisor, Dr. Raymond, while Tania analyzed blood samples.

She called home every other night, and when the full moon hovered close, she sat with Tania and they talked about the Packs they'd left behind. Lydia took her shopping for something to wear aside from labcoats and tee shirts, and talked her into Invisalign braces. Even at this level, school came easily to Lydia and she threw herself into high level special projects to eat up her time and keep her from missing the faces that weren't there with her. She went home on holidays and had Christmas dinner with her mother and spent the rest of the time in the middle of the family she'd built, letting them breathe in the scent of her and kiss her skin and leave new marks to tide them over until she came home again.

A year turned into a year and a half. "They'll come back soon," Derek said once over the phone, his voice clipped and wary.

"They won't. You're doing a good job, they have no reason to take your Pack away, now that you're not a complete failure. And soon. I'll be back soon, and then I can take it from you," Lydia said.

"I shouldn't want that so much," Derek said, thick and guilty.

"If you didn't, then we wouldn't all fit together as well as we do," Lydia answered.

In the end, Tania got her close, but it was Lydia who figured out the protein sequence that would allow the Bite to take. Lydia kissed her as a thank you, and then celebrated with a bottle of good wine. Lydia skipped a graduation ceremony she'd accrued enough credits for and went home.

Lydia called from the plane. By the time she landed, half of them had rounded themselves up to meet her. Derek carried her bags and Jackson kissed her amidst a stream of travelers that were forced to part around them en-route to their gates while Scott and Stiles stood and glared off anyone from complaining.

She had breakfast with her mother and called her father. She went to her favorite place for lunch with Jackson and they only got halfway through before they were rushing out to have urgent, uncomfortable sex in the passenger seat of his Porsche. She went dancing with Danny and Allison. She made sure everything was in order, just in case. "Just in case what?" Scott asked, when he saw her reading through a basic will and asked why.

"It will be fine," Lydia said.

"You don't know that," Isaac said.

"Sure she does," Boyd argued and ran a hand along Isaac's back. Derek said nothing, and they all scattered when Lydia asked them to, except for Jackson who wouldn't go anywhere until Lydia kissed him and pushed him out the door.

"Are you sure?" Derek asked quietly.

"I'm always sure," Lydia said. She could play the part, but wolves knew when you lied. This time, it didn't matter. She meant it. She'd put everything into this. She injected herself with the serum.

When she was thirteen, Lydia remade herself from pale skin, bony knees, and flyaway red hair. She parsed the data and calculated what was needed, and reinvented herself from skinny and smart to fierce and flawless. She'd studied the diagrams and knew the patterns. There was always someone in ascendence, and she knew how to make sure that it was her. Nothing she did was ever without purpose and a goal in mind. She remade herself into what she needed to be.

The data changed, and the top of the pyramid wasn't where she'd thought it was. She'd adjusted, recalculated, and rebuilt herself again out of fang and claw and the relentless pull of the moon. She built herself a place and a family. Werewolves, like everything else, were about heart and numbers. Lydia had the heart, and she knew the numbers. One plus one meant someone could always be left behind. But three and four and six were a Pack, and they were strong, and they were _hers_.

The Bite hurt worse than she expected. The days after it were miserable. But in a week she was running alongside Jackson, claws out and feet sure and wind blowing through her hair.

The Hale house was rebuilt (finally), and it smelled of all of them. Lydia spent the first few days wanting to roll around the carpets and lick the walls and being laughed at by Erica when she was caught doing the former, once. The full moon ticked closer and they were all vital and hungry - a mass of limbs and snaking hands and voracious mouths. It was messy and vibrant and Lydia felt like she'd been born for this.

She could have lived like that, but it wasn't quite right. After the full moon (They spent it locked in the Hale basement with its new reinforced cages; no one tried to break out - they had other things to occupy them) Lydia brought the boxes she'd shipped from school and the supplies Scott had reluctantly snatched from the hospital for her. 

She didn't ask Derek if he was sure, she could see that he was. She laid him out on a table and Peter (the only piece that didn't fit, who hadn't spent the moon in their cell or the last days in wild, happy sex) helped her set up. Three years and more since Peter had used her, and Lydia still didn't forgive him, but she knew him now, and she knew what about him could be trusted and what couldn't. This she could trust him with, and he was steadier than any of the others would have been. 

Only Stiles was there, because Lydia hadn't had the heart to run him off, and he gripped Derek's hand until Derek pried it loose. "Do it," Derek told Lydia.

Stiles shook his head. "This isn't-"

"Trust me," Lydia said. She could say that to Derek, to Jackson and Scott and Erica and everyone else - but Stiles couldn't ever just accept it the way they did. In a way, she loved him for that. Everyone needed another perspective in the mix, even Lydia. He couldn't just trust that things would be fine, but he didn't try to stop her, either.

She hooked the monitors to Derek's bare chest, the portable machines beeping steadily with his heartbeat. Lydia picked up a vial, injecting it into the IV bag Peter held steady. Derek's eyes started to droop, the machine's beeping getting more urgent as they slowed in tempo. Lydia bent down and kissed his lips. And then she sank her fangs into his throat.

He didn't bleed out. It wasn't enough of a bite - just enough that her teeth were there, that it was obvious who would have won if this were a fight. Derek gasped and bled and then his heart stopped.

Lydia felt it, the rush of new power, the change in status. She could feel the strength of her Pack nearby, taste the salt-tang of Alpha blood on her lips. The flatline of the monitors were an almost deafening whine. She ripped them free to stop the noise and her claws wouldn't quite recede enough to inject the counteragent into Derek's vein. Peter took it, doing it for her while Stiles trembled and hung on to Derek's arm.

It took an agonizingly long moment for Derek to come back. When he did it was with a snarl, the bleeding starting again with his heart and then beginning to slow as the healing started. His eyes glowed blue, and behind the pain in his eyes was something nakedly relieved.

"Alpha," Peter said to her, small smile playing around his lips.

Lydia backed off a step, shuddering hard. She felt like her skin was too small and her teeth were too dull. She turned, ripping off clothes and sprinting for the door. The feel of muscles changing and shape shifting was alien and yet, somehow, completely home. She bounded from the porch as a wolf, howl echoing through the woods. Her Pack poured out the door behind her, changing to run at her side. She bowled them over and darted at them, watching them roll over and submit, laughing and growling in joy. Only Derek (and Stiles and Allison) was missing, but time would fix that. 

Peter flung himself at her side, and Lydia knocked him aside, pressing a paw to his chest and pinning him to the ground. He laughed with snapping teeth and Lydia shifted back, wolf giving way to her human shape save for the glowing eyes and claws. She let him up and welcomed the others as they came to hug her. She could feel Derek, his weakness slowly beginning to heal itself away. Everything was as it should be.

Lydia loved it when a plan came together.  
***

Stiles was propped up on the sofa, blood seeping into the cushioned arm and Derek plastered against his side. Allison knelt at his feet, and Danny covered his mouth with a hand when Allison pulled the crossbow bolt from Stiles' thigh, muffling the pained shout. He wasn't bleeding out, but he was bleeding too much for comfort. In the tastefully dim light of the living room she'd decorated, he looked fragile and too human to survive. "Stiles," Scott said from beside her, pained and miserably guilty.

Jackson's hand was light on Scott's arm, comfort in the stroke of his fingers over Scott's wrist, but his voice was tight with worry that sounded like anger. "Why is it always _you_ , Stilinski?"

"Hey, like I planned to walk out and get shot by Allison's cousin," Stiles complained. "Sorry, they didn't give me a chance to use the secret, friend-of-Argent handshake. Because there isn't one. And it's not like they weren't shooting at you, too, asshole."

"Yeah, but they don't HIT me," Jackson said.

"And if they did, you'd heal," Lydia said, and everyone in the room paused, quieting. She tapped her fingers against the coffee table. "This is ridiculous. You're not leaving us, you don't want a way out of the Pack, and there's no reason to refuse. You're part of the Pack. You don't want to be anywhere else, and I can't constantly be there to stare over your shoulder and make sure you survive."

"No one asked you to!"

Lydia ignored Stiles' interruption. "No more weakest link. Enough, it's time. We can't keep doing this." Lydia had been a human amongst wolves too, and it had been easier for her to understand why Stiles refused, back then. But now all her instincts wanted to protect him, and he was refusing the one way she could best do that.

"Allison-" Stiles started to protest.

Lydia cut him off. "Allison isn't the one almost bleeding out. She's not the liability in a fight." Stiles swallowed, already too-pale face turning more ashen as he looked away from her. Derek shot her a look and Lydia softened, just a little. "I know how much you do for us, but that's not helping _you_ stay alive."

Stiles frowned, swallowing hard. "I don't want the Bite," he said woodenly. "I'm never going to want it. You can't make me."

Lydia's nails turned to claws, her eyes glowed red. Every wolf in the room flinched away, except for Derek, who clung grimly tighter to Stiles but couldn't meet her eyes. "I could. No one in this room would stop me." From the corner of her eye, Lydia saw Allison frown, but the other girl stayed quiet.

Stiles met Lydia's eyes. He lifted his chin, and then looked deliberately away, eyes falling on Peter, who hovered at the edge of the room. "But you wouldn't," he said.

Lydia followed his gaze. Peter smirked, but there was something grim and proud in his eyes alongside a flash of fear and respect. Peter would have forced it, Stiles was right. Lydia was never going to be like Peter, the world didn't need two of them. God help her, but sometimes she wished she could be though. Her job would be so much easier if she could be that ruthless. "No, I wouldn't. But get over yourself and take the Bite. We need you. Think of how we'd feel if you were gone. Don't you think Derek has lost enough? Don't you think your father has?" 

She silenced Derek's building protest with a glare, and looked back at Stiles. She wouldn't force him, but she knew how to hammer a point home and didn't particularly care about being gentle while doing it. "You're only saying no because you're too scared to admit what you want. So man up. And the blood had better come out of that sofa, or so help me I'll kill you myself." She leaned in, mouth meeting Stiles' in a slow kiss that belied the threat of her words. He looked somewhere between stricken and angry, and Lydia didn't care about that, either. Angry was better than thinking about the holes in his skin. She snapped at Scott to call his mother to treat him.

When she left the room, her hands shook and Peter followed, keeping his distance but watching. After a moment, Allison joined her. Her slim, strong hand fell on Lydia's shoulder. Allison's hands were always steady, no matter what was falling apart around her. Lydia had come to rely on that. She relaxed, muscle by muscle beneath Allison's grip. "He's not really my cousin," Allison said quietly. "An old family friend, I guess."

"A family friend who tries to murder your **actual** family," Lydia said, and Allison flinched.

"He doesn't understand how I can be part of this. None of them do." Allison was more Pack than Argent now, but it wasn't easy for her to cut the cord. Lydia had less sympathy for that today than she might have on a day when Stiles wasn't bleeding a room away.

"But they work together. They travel. They hunt us. And if we defend ourselves or do the same, then what, we're the monsters?" Lydia shook her head. "I don't accept that."

"Not all wolves are like us - you - Lydia. There are some who are animals, who murder people-"

"Just like the hunters," Lydia interjected.

Allison ignored her, going on. "- someone has to be able to stop them. Police can't. This is how it's always been done."

"That is the stupidest reason to keep doing something that has ever existed. When the system is flawed, you change the system, you don't roll over and accept the way it stands and continue to perpetrate something inherently useless. I'm tired of letting us be blindsided, or letting someone else hold all the cards." Lydia shot Peter a look. "Go get Danny," she ordered. "No more stumbling in the dark. No more one-Alpha-one-Pack, and all of us minding our own business while the hunters and the witches and everyone else picks us off whenever they feel like it. Time for an offensive."

Peter grinned, giving her a playful salute and disappearing. Allison stared at her. "Lydia, what are you going to do? Build an army? A cult? Kill hunters?"

"No," Lydia said decisively. "I'm going to unionize. We'll build a network. Hunters have to exist - fine. Someone's going to look over their shoulders, too. And everyone in your family except for you and your father is an idiot or a psychotic - we'll be better at it."

Allison gritted her teeth. "So I'm supposed to just let you-"

"No. You're supposed to help me. If you don't want wolves calling all the shots, then you get in on the ground floor too, Allison." Lydia tipped her chin up and smiled - all teeth and flashing eyes. Allison held her ground, looking unmoved. Lydia loved her a little bit for that, most of the time.

They stayed there, locked gazes warring until finally Allison let it go, nodding slowly and smiling tightly. "I get input," she decided. 

"Always," Lydia said sweetly. She hooked her arm through Lydia's as they waited for Danny. "You're going to have to choose one day, you know."

Allison's lips pressed against Lydia's temple. "I already have."

"I'll give you the same speech I just gave Stiles."

"Give me a year," Allison said. "I need to tie up some things, and sit down with my dad. . . but in a year."

Lydia felt a rush of excitement and a soft, pleased murmur of a growl rose up in her throat. "Maybe then Stiles will give in."

Allison rolled her eyes. "Don't count on it. And you can't make him."

"I know. But I'm very convincing." Lydia pulled Allison's arms around her and leaned into the slim, solid strength of her body as Danny came in, shooting Peter resentful looks over his shoulder before he let Lydia sit him down and begin outlining her plans.  
***

"You made yourself an Alpha. You cured your immunity," Jackson said suddenly into the quiet of a room filled only with heartbeats and breathing. His head was laid on Lydia's stomach, his hand on Scott's hip where Scott curled against Allison. Erica leaned against Lydia's other side, soft press of breasts against Lydia's arm and her face half turned into Lydia's hair, breathing in time with her, Boyd's arm around her shoulders and his hand on the solid curve of Erica's belly. Across the room Isaac was half draped atop Danny, and Derek and Stiles were on the floor in front of them, tangled together with Derek swatting at Stiles' hand for playing with his hair, now and then. Peter perched on the edge of the sofa Isaac sprawled across, watching them all without speaking.

It was cozy and comfortable and close, the moon two weeks away and the pack safe and together. Jackson's question fell like a bomb into the center of it, shattering away the lazy feel. "Could you cure the Bite, too?"

Lydia felt Erica's breathing hitch, saw Peter's eyes lift to meet hers. "Would you want me to?" she asked, soft and careful. 

Derek sat up, and in the sudden stone of his expression, Lydia saw him think it through. She watched him imagine this strange, dysfunctional family vanishing and leaving just him and Peter behind again. 

Jackson flushed, realizing the upset he'd caused, and looked away guiltily, drawing in on himself. Lydia shook Erica gently off and drew Jackson up to her side, mouth soft against his neck and soft growl echoing against his skin, making him shiver. Years later and a change in species for Lydia, and they still didn't talk about feelings with any kind of skill. Stiles liked to claim everyone but him was emotionally constipated. But Lydia knew that Jackson still woke up and dreamed of being a monster instead of Pack, sometimes, and that he didn't think he deserved anything he hadn't earned. "I could," she told him, because Lydia rarely lied. "I haven't tried, but I could, if I wanted to do it." She'd never found anything she set out to do and hadn't managed. "But I wouldn't. This is what we're meant to be."

Lydia turned her head and her eyes met Scott's, the only one who hadn't made the choice the rest of them had. He smiled and shook his head, and she smiled back, fingers tangling briefly in his curls and letting go again, Allison kissing his jaw a moment later.

Jackson's jaw tightened, but he nodded. Slowly the room settled in again. Isaac put on ESPN, and the bickering over the remote began, as it always did.

Later she slipped out alone and poured herself a glass of white wine that Isaac had picked out. He had the best nose for it of all of them, and he and Lydia took weekends for wine tastings every few months. He was becoming a snob about it, and Lydia approved, even if the rest of her Pack rolled their eyes. She sensed Peter behind her, but didn't turn to face him until he spoke up. "You don't believe in fate," he said.

Lydia sipped her wine and shrugged. "I believe I make my own fate. I made myself belong here. Jackson belongs with me. It's close enough. We made the choice. I own my choices."

Peter smiled. "You should have been born into this. You would be wasted as anything but an Alpha. Laura would have been, too, though she never believed it the way you do."

"Being born into it is cheating. Being better than anyone else is always a bigger achievement than an accident of birth," Lydia said. Peter didn't disagree. She thought he would have, years ago, but it was only a guess. She hadn't asked him, she probably never would. "Do you miss her?" she asked suddenly instead. "Derek does, but you? Do you miss anyone at all?" He'd lost as much as Derek had, as much as Isaac had. But Peter didn't wear it as obviously as they did. 

Peter flinched. "You're not the only one who recreated yourself. I wasn't always what I am now. What I was then isn't the same as what I am now, either. The fire took more than just my family away."

Maybe he was more like Derek than he let on. Lydia didn't have energy to care about either of their self loathing - she had bigger things to worry about. "So what are you now?" Lydia asked.

Peter shrugged. "The same as everyone else. A wolf, your Pack, but on the fringes."

"That happens when you begin a relationship with lies, murder, and mind control," Lydia pointed out. "And you're generally both creepy, and too old to get away with it being charming." She cocked her head to the side. "Looking for atonement?" 

Peter grimaced. "God no. Just existing and attempting to not drown in hormones and Pack drama." He tilted his head, mimicking her. "Though I wouldn't mind a glass of that, or an invitation to one of your tastings."

Lydia pushed the cork into the bottle. She reached into the wine cooler and extracted a decent bottle of red instead. "You don't like white," she said, passing it to him. Peter's shoulders had slumped, and she ignored that, just as she pretended to ignore the way he brightened for just a moment when he realized she knew what he liked. 

She was his Alpha, she knew these things.

"You built yourself a home, Lydia. We both know you didn't really build a space for me inside it," Peter said.

She studied him. "And we both know you're not going to go off alone, either. So where does that leave us?"

Peter opened the bottle of red, pouring himself a glass before he answered. "I don't know," he finally said. "Which is not my favorite thing to admit to."

"We have that in common." Though Lydia usually didn't admit to it. If she didn't know something, she learned it. But this wasn't something intellect and steely determination could fix. "You've been a help to me. I won't forget that."

"You just won't forget how it all started, either," Peter said, sipping his wine.

She didn't deny it. "I'll work something out. You've earned that much."

Peter lifted his class in a silent cheer, and she echoed it. Nothing was settled, but her Pack was safe and they drank in companionable, if not friendly, silence.


	2. Sometimes it's a little hard to sleep at night, in the house where we all live

_"Mr. Stilinski, I understand you're the only human in the. . . Pack?" the too-thin reporter from the Globe asks, his eyes on Lydia, though his question is for Stiles._

_Which is just typical. Luckily Stiles is both used to it, and not actually in a hurry to be the center of attention for the whole werewolf-outing fiasco, anyway, so it doesn't bug him. "Uh, yeah. I mean that's kind of a point of contention, and there was another human but she. . ." Stiles looks over at Scott, and then winces slightly. "She had a status change."_

_"Was she forced into a . . . conversion?" the reporter pursues. Stiles has to give him points for word choices. It's probably hard to adapt a vocabulary on the fly to suit the sudden existence of werewolves. He must have skimmed the info packet Stiles handed out pretty damn quickly. "And do you feel as if your life is endangered by the creatures you keep company with?"_

_"We object to **creatures**. We prefer **supernatural beings**. Or just **badasses** works too," Erica says from where she sits with Boyd at the end of the arranged seating. She flashes a toothy grin at the reporter, who finally looks away from Lydia for a moment to inspect the cleavage on display. (Stiles is like, 68% sure that dress had not been that low-cut when Lydia and her picked it out, but Erica did not believe in going for the Va-Va without a little Voom. Or a lot of Voom.) Stiles can't really blame her though - six months pregnant and there is seriously impressive amounts of cleavage above the baby bump. (He'd tried to go with wolf bump at first, but he'd been shouted down. It had been followed by a very tense conversation with Derek about whether or not born werewolves had cubs-slash-puppies. Scott had been pretty disappointed by the very firm "no" answer. He knew more about puppies than kids.) _

_"We really don't care," Boyd drawls, rolling his eyes. "Just stay away from the dog jokes."_

_"You guys are butting in on my Q &A here," Stiles complains. "And the dog jokes are classics, I'll have you know." He looked back at the reporter. "And no, she wasn't forced." Not technically. More by circumstances of almost-death than by Lydia pushing the Bite on her. But Allison had been ready for it anyway. Unlike Stiles, which was probably never going to stop being a point of friction until the day he gave in. He wasn't ready to admit that he was thinking about it, not yet anyway. "And yeah. Constantly. The danger thing, I mean. But not FROM them. It's more . . . they're targeted. And there isn't anyone to help except the like, five people who know what's going on, and half of them want to kill them off, not help them. So if you care about them, you end up in danger too, but it's not because they want you to be."_

_"We actually try to keep him out of it," Scott says quickly._

_"He just never listens," Derek mutters from his other side._

_Stiles ignores him. "But I mean, that's why we're doing this. Aside from Lydia being the most vindictive person in the world when someone steals her Medal - which she totally earned, by the way."_

_"More than earned. And at a younger age than anyone else ever has," Lydia adds._

_"That's why we follow her - the stunning humility. But that's why we're, you know, here. So people can know about werewolves, and can't just target them or blame them without there being consequences."_

_The reporter looks distinctly uneasy, but asks. "And you don't think this will bring unwelcome attention? Werewolves are classically defined as monsters . . . people aren't likely to react well, and there are no laws in place to protect you. And people aren't prepared to protect themselves **from** you. It's going to make a lot of people uneasy."_

_"There's no reason for people to be uneasy. We've always been here, we've just had to hide. But we're in your Churches and your schools. We ride the same buses you do, and all we want are the same protections the law gives everyone else. And of course there's precedent," Lydia says, and nods to Danny, who gets up and flicks on the projector. She and Danny began going through precedent laws they'd looked up in 31 states - outdated laws that presupposed the existence of superhuman creatures, and court cases which upheld citizenship over accusations of extraterrestrial or supernatural existences._

_As usual, they're pretty compelling, and the werewolf charm thing doesn't hurt. Stiles privately thinks they're all in for at least fifty years of werewolves being blamed for every murder and Hunter pushback when they start publishing their histories of attacks. Or, actually, he not-so-privately thinks that. But Lydia's point was that hiding wasn't working out so well, and that they had to start somewhere. Stiles hadn't really have a good argument for that one, he just isn't thrilled at the prospect of spending his lifetime in the middle of a supernatural revolution. He isn't built to be a suffragette, he likes to cut down on his suffering whenever possible, and he's seen his Pack in danger too often already. Being the spokes-wolves for the revolution was like painting a target right on their backs. But Stiles had gone along with the idea, just like everyone else. He wanted his friends - his Pack - to have what they deserved, too. It just made him nervous when he actually stopped to think about it._

_The gathered crowd is restless and hardly any of them are looking at Stiles. He cranes his neck to stare down the line of werewolves, trying to see what they're seeing. Beautiful people in nice clothes, for the most part. The only face missing is Allison, and they'd all agreed that she shouldn't out herself to the Hunters yet - she's the best chance of a mole they have after all. But it feels wrong not having her there, nonetheless. Stiles doesn't have the fangs, but he's Pack enough that some little part of him always feels empty when one of them is missing, just like a part of him will always have a carved out little hole in his life where his mom should have been._

_Last human standing. Stiles wonders sometimes why he's still holding out, but he thinks maybe this is why. Because it looks less like a gang of furry thugs if they've got at least one human face in the middle of it, unharmed and obviously protected. Even if no one is bothering to look at him yet._

_Stiles doesn't realize his hand is tapping restlessly against the table until Derek's hand covers his to still it. He lets go just as fast, but his arm drapes heavily over the back of Stiles' chair, hand on his shoulder. Stiles manages to sit still, at least for a while._   
***

"You're sure they'll even be here?" Danny asked, scanning the open spaces between the trees.

"They'll be here," Lydia promised.

Stiles was pretty sure **that** part, at least, was true. The Alphas would most definitely show. Whether or not they'd show up and then promptly tear them all to pieces was dicier, but they'd done their research, and Stiles was reasonably hopeful they would live through this.

On the plus side, if they died then Scott and the others wouldn't actually have a chance to yell at them.

"If I'm going to be killed by a werewolf, I'm going to die pretty pissed that I went through all that angst about whether or not to turn into one," Danny said. "And then didn't actually even get to follow through with it before I got dragged into a suicide meeting."

"You used to be more cheerful, man," Stiles complained. "Why do people like you again? It's 90% the pecs, isn't it?"

"Shut up," Lydia said. Stiles resented that she looked at him when it was Danny complaining. He started to tell her so when the phone in Danny's hand started to pulse a soft red. Danny looked at it and then showed them the GPS signal approaching on the screen. Okay, so the Alphas hadn't found the bug Stiles appropriated from the station and stuck on their car. It was a positive first step, at least.

From the narrow road beside the meeting spot, they heard the sound of leaves crunching beneath tires, and then the slam of doors and the thud of feet.

There were four unfamiliar Alphas in total who loped into the clearing. In the middle were Erica and Boyd, flanked by two tall good looking men with identical faces. Stiles felt an unexpected pull of old fear that tasted acrid on his tongue when he caught sight of Erica and Boyd. The last time he'd seen them, they'd been strung up in someone's basement, and Stiles had followed up with some up close and personal time with Grandpa Argent. It wasn't a favorite of his recent memories.

At least Erica and Boyd looked healthy, if a little lost and sad. They had new clothes on, and Stiles could tell they hadn't picked them out because there was a distinct lack of leather and bared cleavage in Erica's, and Boyd's jacket was about an inch too short in the sleeves.

The fourth Alpha hung back a little, and the one who stepped in closer was beautiful and intense, red eyed and clawed. She smiled and tossed her hair, eying the three of them. She sniffed the air and then spread her clawed hands. "Well, don't we all smell like a weak Alpha and his mongrels. Where's your Masters, pets?" 

Ugh. Stiles had been called a werewolf pet by an Argent, a witch, and now an Alpha. He could seriously go without hearing it ever again. "We're kind of here off the clock," Stiles said. He took a slight step to the side to avoid the foot Lydia tried to stomp down onto his.

Erica shook her head very slightly, biting her lip. The Alpha woman growled, but it was almost a laugh. Lydia took a step forward and Stiles almost fell in love with her again based on the fact that she didn't even look a little intimidated. Stiles had no idea how she did that, but it was pretty impressive. "We want our Pack back." Lydia's voice was just as steady as the gaze she pinned the Alpha with.

The wolf bared her teeth. "You have no Pack. Weak Alphas don't get to stay Alphas, and their Betas are ours, until we find a Pack that can handle them. What their human pets do, I don't care, but tell me where Hale is, or I'll tear out your throat. A weak Alpha threatens us all, and a Pack with no leader brings the Hunters down on our heads. Last chance, pretty girl."

"Kali-" Boyd said. She turned to look at him, and he dropped his eyes, though he still argued faintly, "They're friends."

"They're _human_ ," Kali said.

Lydia lifted her chin and she smiled, sleek and dangerous, somehow, all five-foot-two, human inches of her. She was staring down Alphas, and Stiles wanted to pick her up and run for it, for a half a second. But he squared his shoulders. "Human's a plus, sometimes," he said. He sounded pretty steady too, even if he knew his heart was thudding a million miles an hour.

"And the Hunters are already here," Lydia added evenly.

From the corner of his eye, Stiles saw Danny's thumb move. A second later a crossbow bolt rang out from the north end of the glade, hitting the dirt not far from where the twins bracketed Erica and Boyd. The extra Alpha Stiles couldn't see well swore, tearing off toward the source. 

Another bolt came from the opposite side. The twin to Erica's right snarled. "Kali?" he yelled.

"Find them. Aiden stay," Kali snapped. 

Her claws lengthened and Stiles took a deep breath. "Put them on," he yelled at Erica and Boyd, flailing enough to catch their attention.

At the same moment another arrow came, this one from a downwind tree and aimed precisely at Boyd's feet. Attached to it were two sets of ear plugs. Erica caught on first, grabbing for them with a blur of speed as Kali snarled and charged, reaching for Stiles. Another arrow rocketed out, catching Kali in the shoulder and knocking her back a second before her claws reached skin. 

"Now!" Lydia said, and Danny's thumb moved again.

Abruptly the wolves sank to their knees, howling and clapping hands to their ears, eyes going red and agony in their expressions. Boyd was a shade too slow, but Erica pushed the plugs into his ears, and he stumbled back to his feet as she caught his hand, drawing him with her toward Stiles. They both still looked pained, but the plugs blocked the worst of it from sensitive wolf ears. To Stiles, it was just an obnoxious sort of whining sound - but he was only human.

Allison dropped down from her tree, approaching with drawn bow. She held it at ready as Stiles grabbed for Danny's hand and retreated back out of reach with Lydia, Boyd and Erica. His other hand gripped tight at Erica's when he saw her start to flinch away and gather to run at sight of Allison. Stiles shook his head at her quickly, and she stayed, trembling slightly. 

Lydia lifted a hand, and Danny cut the feed from the hidden speakers. Kali lifted her head instantly, snarling and starting to bound forward, the others a step behind her. Danny rapidly turned it back on, and they howled again. Once more was all it took before they stayed still, and stared at them, wary but furious. Kali pulled the arrow from her shoulder and glared at Allison. "Argent," she hissed. "I recognize you. All grown up and murdering with the rest of them, aren't you?"

"You're not really in a place to talk," Danny said mildly.

Stiles didn't miss the sudden, tense fear in the twins behind Kali at the Argent name. Maybe there were a few perks to the homicidal, nutty Hunter family after all. He squeezed Erica's hand again, trying to be reassuring when she couldn't hear a word.

"We're taking our friends. And you're going to leave," Lydia said evenly. "I know what you do. You clean up Packs before they can kill enough to start a war. Omegas and Packs with a corrupted or useless Alpha are a danger to all of you. That's not what happened here. Derek Hale was never brought up to be an Alpha. His family was respected, and now they're dead. He's learning, and he has help. Cut him some slack."

Kali stood slowly, watching Allison's notched arrow. "I know Hale," she said slowly. "He's no Alpha. He'd be less than Beta, just a rogue Omega if his sister hadn't pushed him into place. He's weak. He'll fall apart. You cut the head off a snake off before it bites, not after."

"He won't stay Alpha. But for now, he'll learn."

Stiles wanted to defend Derek, but there really wasn't a lot of ground to stand on. No one had told Derek he failed at life more than Stiles, after all. But that was different, he said it with affection or something. Kali was focused on Lydia and Allison, but Stiles was pretty sure if he breathed wrong, she'd be at his throat in a minute - specially constructed electronic, ear-bleeding dog whistle or not. So he stayed quiet, for once. "We know about Peter. He can't lead either," Kali said.

"He won't," Stiles said quickly. (Okay, maybe he wasn't going to stay entirely quiet."

Kali shot him a look and then her dark eyes were back on Lydia. "Who, then?"

"Do you really have to ask?" Lydia said sweetly. "Five years. If in five years, I'm not leading this Pack, and things are still out of balance, then you come back."

Kali lifted an eyebrow. "Why five years? If you want the Pack, why haven't you taken the Bite. Hale agreed to give you the Bite and then let you tear his throat out?"

Danny cleared his throat. "We tracked your movements, according to sitings from other Packs and Hunters. You take about that long to do a circuit of North America."

"And the rest is none of your business," Lydia added.

"It's all my business, girl."

"My name is Lydia. You should probably learn it now," Lydia told her.

Kali touched her shoulder, the bleeding already slowed to a trickle. "If we don't kill him, the Argents will. They'll be less gentle than we would have been." Behind her one of the twins snickered, and Stiles seriously doubted just how gentle their methods were.

"No, they won't," Allison said evenly. "And if you make a move against the Hale pack, or any wolf in this territory, I've made sure to leave copies of your bios and habits. Every Hunter in the country will be looking for you."

"This is our Pack. We protect it," Lydia said.

"Frail human pets or no," Stiles couldn't help adding.

Kali snorted, fingers running through the blood at her shoulder again, bringing it to her mouth to lick clean. "We could still kill you," she said.

"But you won't," Lydia answered.

"Not now," Kali admitted. She turned her eyes on Erica and Boyd. "This is what you want? A weak Pack and a host of humans?"

Stiles let go of Erica's hand long enough to pluck the plug from her ear. Boyd pulled his out a second later and Erica nodded hastily. "Yes. Don't hurt anyone, please."

"It's not us who'll get hurt," Allison said. Allison, Stiles decided, was capable of being just as terrifying as Lydia. The world should probably be glad they just wanted to take over a werewolf pack, and not plot domination, because they could totally do it if they united their evil.

"We shouldn't have run to start with. And they just want to help," Boyd agreed quickly, if with slightly less enthusiasm. "They're not your enemies, Kali."

Kali was quiet for a second, and then she nodded. "If we come back for them, we come for you, too. All of you." She grinned, all teeth and threat. "And no Argent bow will protect you then." She sobered, and for a moment the menace in her expression gave way to something softer and haunted. Stiles shifted uncomfortably - he knew that look too well. Derek had it, when he thought no one was looking. So did Stiles' father. "A Hunter in your midst is a worse threat than we will ever be. If you want to play Alpha, you'll need to pull the viper from your nest. They'll always turn on you."

Stiles sagged in relief as Kali motioned for the others to follow, and then the four of them disappeared, the screech of tires heralding their leaving. Allison stared after them, looking lost until she shook it off, lowering her bow finally and putting the arrow back in its quiver. 

"Oh my GOD, I need like five beers and a valium," Stiles declared, breaking the tension of the moment with deliberate lack of finesse. "Someone get me quality prescription medication, stat."

Erica flung herself at him, hugging tight, and then did the same to Lydia - much to Lydia's surprise. Boyd just squeezed Stiles' shoulder in a manly fashion and watched as Erica rounded out her hug quota with Danny. "That was amazing," he said quietly. His eyes met Allison's, and she looked away first. "Thank you," he said, but it wasn't directed at Allison. His eyes flickered gold, and he scanned the trees surrounding the clearing. "The other arrows?"

Danny grinned, holding up the phone. "Remote controlled."

Erica swung well away from Allison, who looked resigned. Stiles got it. It would take more than one daring rescue to even the score, considering what Allison had done to her and Boyd. "Remote controlled . . . meaning you could have hit a button and hit us instead if we weren't standing exactly in the right spot?" Erica said, voice slightly flat.

Damnit, she could have taken longer to catch on to that. Stiles clapped his hands. "Hey, look at the time. Isn't it getting late? Or how about those Cubbies? Pick your diversionary tactic here." 

"Let's not hang around here waiting for the visiting team to come back and kill us," Danny said. Which was just as much a diversion as Stiles' comments, but no one glared at Danny for it, of course.

"Right, we have to go be killed by the werewolves who _like_ us for leaving them out of this," Stiles said, starting to herd everyone back toward the Jeep and Allison's car. "I'm driving. Someone else gets to fill the Wonder Twins in on what they missed. Oh - but big plus, no more snake and no more murdering Argents."

"Aside from the one," Erica muttered.

Right. Okay, this was going to take some time.  
***

Oh fuck it, not this _again_. "I don't want it," Stiles said heavily, swallowing around the words. It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the complete truth, either. The little part that wasn't completely true didn't overwrite the rest.

Derek looked down, jaw tight. "Then stop coming around. Stop helping. Stop almost getting killed. Stop getting in the way. Just _stop_. Why is that so hard to understand?"

Stiles wanted to hit him, and he wanted to listen to him and just leave Derek and the rest of them to their _stupid werewolf shit_ and let them see how they got along without his help. They'd had this conversation too many times, and it wasn't even just Derek who said it anymore, or Peter with his snide implications. It was Scott (the traitor, like he'd been jazzed to go wolfy at first) or Isaac, staring at him big-eyed and worried, or Lydia with pursed lips and a breezy tone, as if he was being stupid not to have done it already. "Right, like it's that easy to just walk away. Like I even could. Like you don't need-"

"I don't need you!" Derek growled. His eyes flashed red. Stiles was long past being afraid of him, but sometimes he remembered that they were literally _another species_ and nothing about that was ever going to be at all normal. They would always be coming at the world from different angles, no matter how much he wanted that to not be true. (Sometimes he didn't. Sometimes the fact that Stiles thought like an actual human being was the only thing keeping anyone alive. He didn't get why everyone else didn't seem to realize that.)

"You do!" Stiles managed to say, but it was too soft and it took him a second to rally, to yell again instead of be stung by it. "I know that it kills you to actually need help from anyone, but you are basically functionally useless for anything other than growling, and you need me! So just shut up and-"

"I have nothing to give you," Derek said, abrupt and low and the energy of the room changed in just that second, with just that phrase. Stiles felt his stomach drop and Derek's eyes were dark again when they met his. "If you don't want the Bite, then there's nothing in any of this for you."

Stiles had never wanted to get anything out of it. "There's Scott, and Erica and Isaac and-"

"You have them. You'll always have them. You'll have them if you leave and talk over Skype. You'll have them if you fly home on holidays. You'll have them if you help with homework but stay home when there's trouble. You don't have to DO this to keep them," Derek said.

There was a lot there to unpack. Because, yeah, Stiles got it. Derek had almost lost all of them, and he still didn't how to keep them together. It was basically Lydia with assists from the rest of the Pack and their associates who wove it all together. Derek had lost a lot before he even hit Scott and Stiles' age. Derek believed they could all just vanish at the drop of a hat, and he thought that there wasn't anything that could come between Stiles and Scott, or Jackson and Lydia. But the thing was, Stiles was pretty sure that wasn't true. 

Scott had practically vanished into Allison and the Bite at first, and the only reason Stiles hadn't lost him then was that Stiles was tenacious and had figured out what was going on before Scott had, which kept him from doing the "stay away for their own good" thing that Jackson had tried with Danny and Lydia. Stiles was human, and he was separate, and he talked too much and he wanted things he couldn't have and it would be so, so easy to leave him behind, if he wasn't useful. Derek didn't know that. Derek never knew. There was a list of things Derek didn't know and it was long and storied and Stiles could make him an itemized spreadsheet. Chief among them was that Derek _was not the one who could be left behind_ , or at least not the only one. But all he said was, "you know what Skype is? Dude. No more Peter time for you, the world is a better place if you stay a technophobe. The Betas are pretty lax about hiding their porn and you'll find things you don't want to know if you start poking around their laptops. Well, except Danny, seriously, I tried for twenty minutes to get into a file he had encrypted to see what-"

"Stiles."

Stiles shut up, and Derek glared. Stiles babbling and Derek glaring made up about 80% of their interaction, so it wasn't like it wasn't business as freaking usual. But today it felt different. "I'm not looking for anything out of it," Stiles finally said. "It's not how I work." Stiles didn't go into things wondering what he'd get back out. He wasn't a saint. It wasn't as if he didn't like when he got pats on the back and proved he was basically more awesome than could be summed up in words. And he couldn't flat out deny he wasn't drawn to the danger of it all, even if he usually rethought that when he was a step away from dying of some new monstrous thing that came to visit. But he wasn't in it for anything except to help, and because he wanted to be.

And maybe he needed to be needed. Derek didn't have the monopoly on abandonment issues.

"You think I don't know that?" Derek asked. "You don't want anything, except to be there, but I- we can't keep you _safe_."

_Keep him safe_ , like Stiles was a toddler who kept putting his hand on the stove. "I didn't ask you to keep me safe! I take full autonomy for my safety. I did not ask for a nanny, and lets not forget that there have been _multiple_ occasions when you were the one putting people in danger or taking danger and making it like, ten time worse because you have poor communication skills and-"

Stiles stopped because the fight whooshed out of Derek like the air had been sucked out of him and replaced with something weary and sad. Stiles knew how to deal with Derek being angry. He knew how to deal with Derek being irrationally and needlessly shirtless, and how to deal with him being technologically inept, and how to deal with him being full of thwarted werewolf rage. Stiles never knew how to deal with sad because Derek rarely wanted anyone to see, which Stiles understood. Stiles spent the year after his mom died pretty learning how to not look like he was a step away from crying every time he thought about her. Hiding sadness was familiar and Stiles was the last one who'd ever break the bro code by mentioning it, even if they weren't technically bros. They basically had an understanding of being too manly for feelings aside from mutual annoyance or panic (mostly on Stiles' part, that one). But Derek deflated, and he seemed . . . smaller and tired, and Stiles wanted . . . he just wanted. Being angry was easier than wanting to help someone when you'd never figured out how to fix yourself, let alone anyone else.

Derek ran a hand over his face and he just looked at Stiles for a long enough beat of time that Stiles started to wonder if he'd missed something, if he'd blinked or drifted and some piece of vital conversation had been lost. But then Derek just shook his head. "I know," he said.

Stiles had to run back what he'd said until he found what it was Derek knew, and then he grimaced. "Hey, I didn't mean . . . it's not like we've done that for a while. Make things worse for each other. I know you don't mean. . . I mean we're friends now. Past history of bad interpersonal moments is just . . . history."

Derek was watching him, dark-eyed and intent and Stiles wanted to fidget and move away, but stopped himself. "Are we friends?"

Stiles swallowed. "We're friendly?" he tried. He wasn't a wolf. He wasn't Isaac, who could crash at Scott's one night and then spend a weekend with Derek and sneak fries off his plate at dinner, or Erica who could cuddle up against Derek's side and he'd just let her. He and Derek didn't have that. But they had something. Stiles had to believe that. "Aren't we?"

Derek smiled. "Yeah, Stiles. We are." He had a nice smile. Damn him.

"Yeah. I mean you're not actually very good at it, but we are." Derek snorted and looked down, and Stiles considered regretting his need to have the last word. It felt like the end of a conversation, and Stiles knew the cues well enough to know he should probably walk away now. He should just get in his Jeep and drive home and the status-quo was maintained. He wasn't getting Bitten, Derek would deal with it. Stiles would try not to come so close to fragile, human death for a while and things would just go on the way they were until . . . something changed. But he didn't move, didn't leave, and after a second Derek made a sound.

Stiles had a pretty in-depth knowledge of growl-sounds. He knew growls for hungry, for annoyed, for pained, for ready-to-tear-throats-out, for afraid. He dealt with a lot of werewolves, and Stiles learned quickly. But this was different. The only comparison he had was the time he'd been at the vet, waiting for Scott when a cat came in with a thorn stuck in its paw. It had snarled in equal parts threat, fear, and pain when Scott held it down and Deaton had pulled the thorn out. It had been sort of weirdly adorable and oddly funny, mostly because it was all of about five pounds and had been pretty sure if it tried hard enough, it could claw its way through Scott's hands to freedom and victory. Stiles had named it Lion-O, and given it a bite of his tuna sandwich, once it was safely caged and no longer full of righteous fury. Scott hadn't been thrilled. But Stiles remembered the noise it made.

It sounded really different on Derek, but at the same time not all that different, either. Stiles opened his mouth to ask what the hell _that_ was about, when Derek muttered something that sounded like _if Lydia's wrong, I'll kill her_. And then his opportunity was gone because his mouth was busy.

Oh god, his mouth was busy because Derek's was pressing against it. It was deep and artless and sort of unpleasantly hard, but Stiles _absolutely did not care at all_ because Derek's hands were cupping his face and Stiles was making a sound that was probably deeply embarrassing. His hands scrabbled up to grip at Derek's neck, the other fisting into his shirt. Their noses bumped and it was hectic and messy and terrible. But it was a kiss. It was an actual, Derek-initiated kiss and Stiles felt like there should be _heavenly bells from on high_ or something, to signal the miracle that this was, because he'd been pretty positive this was never going to happen. If somehow it had happened, he'd been sure it would be because Stiles cracked under the barrage of sexy glowering and would be immediately followed by being shoved off. That wasn't even close to happening.

Then Derek tipped his head, and curled an arm around Stiles and his mouth softened and it turned into a good kiss. Like a really good kiss. For all that the world at large thought Stiles was a hopeless virgin - the world had it pretty wrong. Admittedly, that was because his best friend was a werewolf who somehow caught polyamory from Stiles' former (okay, not former) crush and then had initiated Stiles into the ranks. The Pack was messy and physical and Stiles wasn't wolf enough to be there for all of it, but they had lips and reaching hands and Erica had a mouth that left lipstick rings in interesting places. 

The point was that Stiles was not completely out of his depth. He'd been in love with Lydia for years. He'd gotten over it, mostly, and it wasn't like he'd been fixating entirely on Derek. (See: Pack sexy times. There were few things more distracting than Danny and Lydia giving collective lessons on giving head, and then letting people practice, for example.) But the kiss settled in and Derek was solid and warm and Stiles felt like he'd been waiting for this but hadn't known it. The part of Stiles' brain that always ran too-fast and failed to focus didn't quite go away (making out was not an ADD cure) but it seemed to quiet, just for a minute, and let Stiles sink into the kiss, and the feel of it. Even without the fangs and the fur, Stiles felt like he belonged instead of like he had to carve out a space for himself before someone took it away.

Derek broke away from his mouth and buried his face in Stiles' neck, breathing in ragged and deep. He had an inch and a good 70 pounds on Stiles, probably, but Stiles felt like he was the one holding them up. It was a good feeling. "You always smell like them," Derek mumbled. He sounded annoyed about it, and it made Stiles grin. "They were always all over you, but I wasn't."

"You can be all over me, too." Stiles paused. "I didn't actually mean that to sound like a cheap line, but if that's how you want to take it, I'm okay with it."

Derek growled, and it sent a shiver down Stiles' spine. He curled his fingers into Derek's hair and yanked until he lifted his head and Stiles could kiss him again. "Lydia told you to make a move, didn't she? How are you whipped by a redhead who isn't even a wolf yet?" he asked between heated, deep kisses. Derek was walking them both back step by step until Stiles' back was against a wall and Derek could press up against him. Stiles wondered why today had to be the one day Derek wore an actual shirt like the kind with sleeves. It was completely unfair.

Derek made a face. "She . . . suggested. Strongly."

"She does that," Stiles answered, laughing. Derek's teeth scraped against his throat, and Stiles made that embarrassingly whiny sound in his throat. Stiles would worry about it more, but Derek seemed to like it. "You're still not biting me, dude." Derek lifted his head and arched an eyebrow, head tilting before he leaned in and, deliberate and slow, nipped at Stiles' lip.

Stiles drew a shaky breath and amended, "okay. . . not biting enough to draw blood." Derek laughed against his skin and kissed him again. Stiles was charmed by the laugh and couldn't even be bothered to care about the fact that the move to put him wall-adjacent had put them into the line of view of two betas and a redhead with a camera phone.

He probably owed Lydia a few choice shots, anyway.  
***

  
**Me:** hey, u busy?  
 **Red Queen:** Always.  
 **Me:** rephrasing. bored. u should talk 2 me.  
 **Red Queen:** Where's everyone else?  
 **Me:** shopping. wolfing. guess which is which.  
 **Red Queen:** I already know Jackson took Derek and Isaac for clothes that actually fit.  
 **Me:** u aren't fun. erica and boyd had a fight thing. the 'leave the toilet seat down' kind of fight not the real thing. went running. scott at allisons.  
 **Red Queen:** I'll get online.

Stiles set down his phone and fired up his laptop, opening up Skype and waiting for Lydia. He spared a look for his room to see if there was anything embarrassing lying around, because Lydia was supreme ruler of screen-shotting everything he didn't want her to see and then sharing it with the world at large. He hadn't actually been hanging out at home all that often though, so his room was neat enough. There wasn't even a pair of superhero-themed underwear hanging around, since it wasn't close enough to laundry day for him to have whipped them out.

When Lydia popped up, it was with the laboratory background Stiles was getting used to seeing, but it wasn't Lydia. "Man, you guys must live there," he said.

"She mostly does," Tania said. "I still try to sleep in my actual room. She said she'd be here in a minute, she's working on an equation."

"She should be paying you, Tan," Stiles said.

Tania laughed. Whenever her eyes caught the camera squarely, it flared a little too gold, like JJ Abrams was smearing on the lens-flare. But Stiles was used to it. "She mostly just buys me lunch," Tania said.

And clothes, if Stiles was any judge, since the top Tania wore was not a tee-shirt of some random 80's cartoon franchise, the way it usually was. He liked Tania, and sort of resented if Lydia was axing her love of Transformers, since it had sparked one of the most satisfying Optimus VS. Starscream debates he'd ever had. (Scott was a lousy debate partner, since they always liked the same characters as kids.) He liked Tania. He'd asked Lydia once if she thought about bringing Tania back into the Pack to up the estrogen levels, and Lydia had said Tania had a Pack of her own. But still, he wouldn't mind, she was nerd-cute, too, which Stiles appreciated, since he was currently the only non-perfect-abs person in their Pack. "So how's it going, anyway? Did you ever actually ask out the girl in your Lit class?"

Tania looked resigned. "Straight," she said. Stiles clucked in sympathy, but Tania didn't look all that upset. Stiles just hoped she got a girlfriend (or boyfriend) soon enough that she got over her Lydia adoration. Stiles knew the signs, and he was pretty sure their Pack's sex arrangement did not apply to non-Pack members. "What about you? Isaac said you and Derek were trying an actual date when he and Lydia talked the other day."

"Oh my God, it was a disaster. I managed to drop his phone into his soup, he terrified the waiter into dumping lemonade onto my lap, and then Jackson called halfway through and made us come pick him up because he'd run his Porsche into a pole trying not to hit a dog. And then he kept the dog and put it in the back of Derek's car and it ate the edge of the seat and growled at Derek the entire ride. Allison ended up taking it home, and Scott is pretty sure it's a she and pregnant, so Erica and Isaac want puppies and Allison's dad is blaming Derek, and Derek is blaming Jackson, and I got exactly _zero_ percent laid that night," Stiles burst out, laughing.

Though really, the not getting laid part had sucked, and so had the fact that Derek had grumbled that they were never doing this again. Because yeah, having a bunch of hot people who let you make out with them was cool. But it was always Stiles in the middle of all of them, or Stiles with Derek, and then they never talked about it. Stiles didn't actually know if Derek was availing himself of the open invitations when Stiles wasn't there, or if Stiles was supposed to abstain. Plus there was pretty much _always_ Pack around, so when they were together it was always rushed and the idea of an actual date had seemed good at the time. It still did, except for how Derek now refused to even entertain the idea and Stiles was not pathetic enough to bring it up again.

But other than that, it was still pretty funny.

Tania laughed too. "Okay, that's worse than asking a straight girl to coffee," she admitted.

Stiles frowned. "She wasn't like, a jerk about it was she?"

"Nah, she was fine. Said she was flattered, but not interested, basically."

"Sucks. But points for asking, I mean that took guts, right?"

Tania smiled. "That's what Lydia said, too." Stiles suspected the newfound confidence was courtesy of their future Alpha, too. "I've got to go check some results, Lyd'll be in here in a minute. I'll talk to you later. Tell Danny I said hi, okay?" She wiggled her fingers in a little wave at the screen and then got up and walked out of frame.

Stiles pulled up Bejeweled, playing in another window until Lydia sat down. Her hair was pulled up in a bun and she had less makeup than Stiles ever saw her wear when she was in public, back home. She looked tired, but not in a bad way. Being a super-genius Yale girl agreed with her, like most things did. "Tania looks good," he said by way of hello.

"She's coming along," Lydia said, and blurred past the screen a little as she reached for a coffee and then sat back again, sipping it. "So you're all alone at home? Why didn't you go with the boys and get something that isn't a hood and layers of cheap poly-blend to wear?"

"Uh, because I don't need Jackson to buy me clothes?" Stiles told her.

She snorted delicately. "He can suck your dick, but not buy you a shirt? It's only money."

"So says the girl who always has some."

"Exactly."

Stiles sighed. "He can buy me a shirt for Christmas or something, okay?" He didn't really want to argue about this, since it wasn't the first time it had come up. There had been the time his Jeep needed five hundred bucks in repairs, and the time his dad's insurance lapsed because of his brief non-employed period and Stiles' meds hadn't been covered, and a few other times. He basically had a quota of times he could argue about people paying for his shit, and he was way the hell over it already.

Lydia let it go. Bless her. "So what's wrong?"

Stiles sank back in his chair. "I don't know. Nothing, I guess." Lydia lifted an eyebrow, waiting, and he sighed. "My dad found out." Lydia still just waited, and Stiles hated himself a little for how well that technique worked on him. Derek did it too. (Though with more glaring.) "Scott's mom told him about the werewolf stuff, and then he came to me and it just . . . all came out." The history of almost dying, the Hunters, the supernatural, the witchcraft stuff Stiles was sort of learning.

"What did he say?" Lydia asked.

"He was. . . I mean he freaked out a while, and yelled, but mostly. God, Lydia, he was so hurt. About how much I'd lied to him. And we finally got through it all, and he looked so tired, and asked if there was anything else, and I just couldn't lie to him again. I already felt like the worst son ever."

Lydia smiled wryly. "So then you told him you were sleeping with a werewolf?" she guessed.

Stiles rubbed a hand across his face. "Yeah. The bisexual thing threw him, but only because he was surprised, you know? But the older guy, werewolf, son-lying-to-him-for-years thing. . ." Stiles shrugged. "It's like I looked up all the ways to be a screw up and then did them all at once, you know?"

"Except for where you pull a 3.5 GPA, take online classes, regularly help him with cases, and take care of him and your friends," Lydia pointed out.

She had a point, but Stiles wasn't ready to admit it. "And the thing is - I'm _still_ not even really telling the truth, since I'm not actually dating a werewolf, even if that's the impression he got. I just sort of . . . save his life frequently and sleep with him even more regularly while also screwing around with his entire Pack and arguing with him and not knowing what the hell I'm doing. How do you explain that?"

"You're dating Derek," Lydia said.

Stiles blinked at her. "What?"

"You're ridiculous, you know that? Pack is Pack, you've been around them enough to know what makes them happy, and how they need each other. With our Pack, we're not related - mostly - and it works best with everyone as an . . . I don't know."

"Orgy," Stiles supplied.

Lydia didn't accept the term, but didn't argue it, either. "But that's how we work. It doesn't change how Derek feels about you. You. Are. Together."

"I literally have no actual clue how Derek feels about the parts of me he doesn't have sex with."

"I have no actual clue why I'm being forced to have this conversation with you when you should be having it with Derek," Lydia countered.

"Point," Stiles said, mostly because he didn't want to talk about it anymore. He hunched his shoulders, moving another few Bejeweled rows and then looking back at Lydia, who was doodling on a notebook while she talked to him. "He asked me why I didn't just leave. My dad, not Derek. I had to explain how the danger thing doesn't happen that often anymore, and somehow it turned into me promising him that I wasn't doing anything they needed, and then he just started trying to convince me to leave, and get away from it all." Stiles bit his lip and looked at Lydia. "You're . . . at Yale. Kicking ass, taking names. You're beautiful, rich, smarter than everyone. Do you ever think about just walking away from this mess?"

Lydia stopped her doodling, looking down. "Once," she admitted. "There were girls in my Eco class talking about summer in Paris, and they said I should come. And I thought 'I could do that', just for a second." She half smiled. "But then I thought of Jackson, and of you and Allison and Scott and home, and I knew it wasn't what I wanted. Not for more than a second it took to think about it. If you don't know that too, Stiles . . ." 

"I do," Stiles said. "I just don't want to let my dad down anymore."

"So don't. Get your degree, make him dinners, and don't die. He loves you, he'll get used to the rest," Lydia said.

"Do you ever think about telling your parents?"

Lydia lifted an eyebrow again. "My parents are not like your dad, Stiles. It's not the same."

"So that's a no?" Stiles didn't wait for an answer. "We miss you, you know. You should take a weekend and visit."

"If I do, will you wear a new shirt?"

Stiles pursed his lips. "You are hurtful and manipulative," he informed her. "But fine."

"Tell the others I said hello," Lydia said.

"Will do . . . hey, do you happen to know if Derek is actually screwing the rest of the Pack, too? Because that is kind of a topic we haven't broached yet."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "Use your words and ask him yourself, you idiot."

"Your boyfriend is having puppies," Stiles said, just to be a dick. Lydia made a distinctly rude gesture and disconnected.  
***

"Seriously, Stilinski? This is what you called us down for?" Jackson had been upstairs in Isaac's room with Scott. From the flush in his cheeks and the finger-tangled state of Scott's curls, it was blatantly obvious what they'd been doing.

"Yeah, I'm so sorry to interrupt the intense _'studying session'_ ," Stiles said dryly, complete with obnoxious finger quotes. Scott flushed, and Jackson just smirked. Surprisingly, there was an actual large amount of studying going on when Jackson and Scott were tucked into a room. (Though not this time, clearly.) Whatever his flaws (many, many flaws), Jackson was smart and focused and had somehow proven to be better at helping Scott with his homework than Stiles ever had been. Scott would make a good vet, eventually, with Deaton's help, but the classes weren't easy for him. Jackson had years of exposure to Lydia, and Stiles was convinced that had helped him somehow understand how to break math and science down into easier concepts for someone less skilled. Since Jackson was smart, but Lydia was in another league. "But I've told you like ten times this week, so this is my last stand. You have to learn. I will start smacking you with a rolled up newspaper."

Jackson's jaw flexed as he ground his teeth. "Stilinski . . ."

"Just do it, otherwise he'll keep nagging about it," Scott said.

Stiles pointed at him. "Listen to the voice of wisdom and experience, Whittemore. Scott speaks only the truth. Though I object to the term _'nag'_."

Jackson glared some more, and then walked over and very deliberately picked up the coffee mug he'd left on the counter, wiped the ring beneath it, and then put it in the dishwasher.

Stiles grinned. "Good boy." He held out a cookie. "Who's a good boy? Yesss, Jackson's a good boy, yes he is."

Scott laughed as Jackson swatted the cookie aside. Jackson started to say something - probably some kind of empty threat - and Stiles took the opportunity to swoop in and kiss him instead.

Unlike the others, Jackson was still surprised by that kind of thing, coming from anyone but Scott or Allison (or Lydia, when she was home). But he relaxed after a second, kissing back and then giving Stiles a none-too-gentle shove back against the counter, following and pinning him there. "One of these days," he threatened vaguely. 

Jackson wouldn't actually hurt him, and Stiles suspected that, much to Jackson's horror, he was actually _fond_ of Stiles, but it still made his heart speed a step when Jackson's fingers curled at his throat, and then drifted to his shoulder, gripping hard enough to bruise. He trailed his mouth along Stiles' throat, dragging back up toward his mouth and scraping his teeth along bare skin. Scott stepped up behind him, mouthing at the back of Jackson's neck.

Stiles was anticipating the kiss at the end of that trail Jackson's mouth was on when suddenly Scott and Jackson both froze. They backed down and away, fluid and sudden, the same moment as a low, dangerous growl came from the doorway.

Jackson's eyes were dropped, faint tremble in his limbs. But Scott frowned at Derek. "He wasn't hurting him," he protested.

Stiles caught his breath and then scowled. "What the hell was that?"

The stone-faced fury and red eyes faded, and Derek actually looked sheepish. "I'm sorry. His teeth were . . . I've been trying . . ." he swallowed, and then gestured. "It's fine, go on, I'll just go."

Okay, Stiles was not having this. It'd been months since he asked Lydia about the state of the sex-with-others union, and he'd managed to find out that yeah, Derek was not staying constantly celibate when Stiles wasn't around. But for whatever reason, he was never there WHEN Stiles was with the others. And Stiles was starting to get a complex about it. "Seriously? You're just going to growl and go? Do you have an actual problem with me doing what _everyone else here_ does or something? Because if so, that's something that should come up."

Derek's jaw flexed. "No."

"You are not mono-syllable-ing this. I don't know . . . look, if there's some rule where you get to sleep with them and I don't, then you have to tell me. Or if you want-"

"It's not like that," Derek interrupted.

Scott looked from Stiles to Derek and then caught Jackson by the arm. "We'll just-"

"No, nothing else in the Pack is private, why should this be?" Stiles snapped, hanging on to Jackson's other arm. (Jackson no longer looked like he was worried about his throat being ripped out, but he was less than thrilled about being the man in the middle, either. Stiles had zero interest in catering to Jackson at the moment though.) "Is this like . . . because I'm not Pack? Because I'm human, I'm not allowed to be . . . with them WITH you? It has to be separate? Is it because you want them more?" Which made very little sense when he thought about it, but it was how Stiles felt, anyway.

"Jesus, Stilinski, you're stupid," Jackson grumbled.

Stiles seriously considered clubbing him over the head with his dirty coffee mug. He might have done it if it wasn't already in the dishwasher. 

Derek looked like he was considering the same thing, but then he just shook his head. "It's because they're Pack. But that's not really it."

"Well, that clears that RIGHT up, thanks," Stiles grumbled. It hurt though, because Stiles was more upset than rational, and it sounded too close to the things he was most afraid of when he let himself worry about it.

"It's because we're Pack, but you're his mate," Scott said suddenly. Stiles turned to gape at him, but Scott wasn't looking at him. He was staring at Derek. "Right?"

Derek kind of looked like he'd swallowed something poisonous and was a step away from heaving it back up. (Sadly, that was an expression Stiles actually knew from experience.) His eyes flickered toward Scott, but settled back on Stiles, and then he nodded slowly. 

"Like me and Allison, and Jackson and Lydia," Scott said earnestly. "I didn't know if I could at first, either, because Allison is . . . but it's okay, when it's Pack. Because I know they know she's mine, and I'm hers, and Jackson's Lydia's . . ."

"We're ALL Lydia's," Stiles couldn't help muttering.

Scott ignored him. "We know. We don't want to take him, we just want to be a part of you and him."

Stiles felt something a little fragile and sharp prick in his chest, because that was something he knew _exactly_ how to want, and had no idea how to actually express. Derek didn't look much better, and he was searching Stiles' face like there were answers there. "It's different for an Alpha. There's things . . . if there's others there, I won't be able to help," he said awkwardly. "It's better if-"

Oh. _OH_. Stiles knew this. Peter's creepy tendency toward TMI and Tania's wealth of werewolf knowledge and his extensive 'net surfing had all led to Stiles having information that he didn't always share because it was dubious or disturbing. But he knew this. And he'd wondered, but never asked, because how did you ask? So he'd just read choice bits of bad porn out loud now and then until Derek looked murderous about it. But he _knew about this_. "You mean claiming. I know . . . look I'm on the net a LOT and Peter tells me things because he likes the look on my face when I'm contemplating clawing out my own eardrums so I don't have to listen. . . what I'm saying is I know. And I'm good with it. So good. I've almost . . . look as long as there is lube involved and it's what you want . . . seriously, Derek. I want," Stiles stumbled through.

Jackson looked from where Derek was staring to Stiles' face and then snorted. "What the hell are you talking about? I know you two have been screwing already so-"

Derek ignored him (Stiles could almost feel Jackson's inner drama queen starting to seethe at so much ignoring of his mouth and the things it was saying) and took a step closer to Stiles, eyes huge and skin a shade too pale. "You don't get it. Stiles, you're just a k-"

"If you say I'm just a kid after all the times I've had your dick in my mouth, I'm going to hurt you," Stiles said. "Kick to the nads levels of hurt."

Derek growled and then rephrased - thankfully. "You're young. And if I claim you, I won't be able to let you go. Not without . . . it will mean you're mine, do you get that?"

"So not sleeping with Pack, you mean?" Stiles was infinitely glad Scott asked that, because it meant he didn't have to.

Derek shook his head. "No. That's not . . . it's not about sex. I don't care if you're with them . . ." he trailed off and then amended with an amount of honesty that Stiles thought was probably painful for him. (Though he no longer looked like he was a step from heaving, so that was probably a step up.) "I like it. That you're with them. I like the thought of it and the smell of it because it means you're . . . pulled in further. But if an Alpha claims a mate he - she - can't let them go. Not even if it works, and Lydia ends up Alpha . . . I'll be bound to you. And when you change your mind and want out of his life, you won't be able to. You'll feel it, too. You'll feel like mine, and I'll feel like yours, and you'll be stuck."

_Stuck_ was probably a bad choice of words, considering the methods at work and Stiles would probably normally have blundered right into saying that. But he was too busy feeling that same sharp edge in his chest because of just how badly he wanted Derek to be stuck, and Stiles to feel like there wasn't anything that could take that away from him. "Oh my god, please. I will get on my knees for begging or other purposes, but I want that. I want to keep you."

Derek stepped forward then, and he yanked Stiles against his chest. (Jackson was summarily dragged along since Stiles still had a death grip on his arm. He noticed the guy was not complaining about it with Derek that close, though.) "It was never me who would leave," he said. Stiles would have argued that too, but then Derek's mouth was against Stiles' mouth and his hands were taut on Stiles' hips. Stiles finally let go of Jackson to clutch at Derek instead, fingers frantic with buttons and zippers without getting very far because he had no coordination at moments like these. Derek's hands were rough as they touched him, wandering everywhere but leaving Stiles to do all the work of getting them naked, his mouth barely breaking away from Stiles' until he finally pulled away, looking past Stiles. "Stay. Come." he said.

Stiles was a breath from saying he wasn't going anywhere, and that he planned to come _a lot_ when he realized it wasn't him Derek was talking to. Scott and Jackson stood uncertainly, but both of them were dark-eyed and hard in their jeans. Stiles gave a vague sort of thumbs up of approval before he was being dragged backwards, down the hall and toward Derek's room. Derek was all but hauling him along. "You are a _caveman_ ," he complained. Derek grunted, and then Stiles' back was on Derek's bed (he had sort of expected it to be rock hard and covered with sticks to poke him in vulnerable places and remind Derek nightly how much he hated life, the first time, but it was actually plush and smelled like the good kind of laundry detergent) and Derek was finishing the job of stripping them. 

Stiles couldn't even tell if Scott and Jackson followed until he felt the bed dip next to his head. He turned enough to see Jackson's back against the headboard, Scott hovering over him, kissing him. Both of them were watching Stiles and Derek between kisses, and Stiles was surprised how low that was on the embarrassing scale. It was actually weighting much further toward _incredibly hot_. Stiles thought his brain was probably permanently warped from living half his life in a werewolf orgy, but he wasn't complaining about it.

Stiles had gotten pretty good at multi-tasking when it came to sex. But this was different, and he found himself lost to the slide of Derek's hands and the heat of his mouth and body. It all blurred together and he was kissing and touching and talking without having the slightest idea what he was saying. Though from the stray snorts of laughter or groans from Derek and the peanut gallery, it was probably either funny or hot or both. He didn't want to come, wanted to wait until Derek was full and hard inside him, but Derek's unnaturally talented tongue sort of killed that idea.

It didn't seem to matter though, since Derek was teasing him open with fingers and tongue before Stiles could even come down at all from orgasm. Derek's growl of satisfaction vibrated against Stiles' skin. Whatever thought his dick had of softening at all vanished under the assault, and then he was bucking practically off the bed when Scott leaned over him, tongue against his stomach - licking the come from his skin. Jackson leaned in to do the same a moment later, mouths tangling above Stiles' stomach, sharing the taste of it.

Derek lifted his head, and there was a darkly content look tangled up with enough _want_ that it leveled Stiles to see it. He still felt like the awkward kid who couldn't get a date and fantasized about Lydia Martin, half the time. But that kid wouldn't have Derek Hale staring at him like that, and Stiles whimpered again, hands finding Scott's hair because it was closest. "Please, oh my God, Derek, I'm going to kill you, I need-"

"Shhh. Soon," Derek promised, and pressed a fourth finger inside him. Stiles felt full and pained and so, so wide open and eager to be fucked that it was probably illegal in every southern state. He clutched at Scott and Jackson, since they were there, and could vaguely see them moving in and out of the corners of his eyes, pawing at each other and watching their Alpha and Stiles.

Finally, _finally_ Derek was moving up, kissing Stiles and then rolling him over, pulling him up onto his knees. Stiles went with it, face pressed into the bed until someone (Scott?) shoved a pillow under his head and Stiles turned his face, watching Jackson hover over Scott, fucking himself slow and sinuous on Scott's dick. It was hot to watch, and probably always would be, but Stiles stopped paying attention a second later, because Derek was sliding inside him, curling over his back and pounding into him. Derek was never exactly _careful_ , because he was Derek, and Stiles wasn't a fragile flower, and half the time they were fucking on the heels of an argument of some kind, so there was always a charge to it. But it was different, this time. Stiles felt filled and owned and he started to curl his fingers into the sheets, but then Jackson's hand slid into his, holding tight and Stiles gripped it instead. His other hand slid down to wrap around his dick, but Derek caught it, batting it away, touching him instead as he thrust into Stiles, fast and urgent.

And then he felt it, the new, swollen thickness that was pushing against him. _Knot_ , his brain supplied, and he must have said it aloud, because he dimly heard Jackson say _Jesus fucking CHRIST_ , but Stiles only paid attention to the way Derek's hips stuttered, and his head dropped to Stiles' back, trembling with the effort of making himself stop. "Stiles?" he asked.

"Yes," Stiles said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. He said it with his body instead, pushing back, and then Derek was groaning and shoving forward.

It hurt. It was uncomfortable and too-full and it stretched him and swelled tighter and Derek was just. . . locked there. The pain became secondary, a side note to the feeling of having Derek linked to him, filling him up. _Stuck_ inside him. Derek was rolling his hips in these tight, frantic motions and the swollen knot of his dick pressed against nerves inside and Stiles could feel Derek coming, hear the growl that sounded as loud as a roar above him. And then Stiles' head was rushing and he was making sound he couldn't hear above the white noise in his head as he came across Derek's hand. His vision swam and pleasure rushed through him so hard Stiles was dangerously close to swooning like the heroine in a bad romance novel.

Stiles' head was fuzzy and he didn't really rouse from panting, slightly uncomfortable bliss until he was turned on his side, Derek spooned up against his back, still locked inside him. Stiles was sensitized and wrung out and that "slightly uncomfortable" was in danger of turning into more than slightly. But he was grinning, and he curled his hand around Derek's where Derek's arm locked around him. Scott and Jackson looked wrecked beside them, and Stiles didn't miss the way they both looked to Derek for permission before leaning in, kissing Stiles one after the other, and then doing the same to Derek. Someone's hand drifted down Stiles' side, touched between the cheeks of his ass, where he and Derek were still connected. Derek let them, and watched as Scott got up, coming back with a wet washcloth and cleaning up first Stiles, and then Jackson, trading quiet kisses and whispered words Stiles was too sleepy to catch until Scott curled up next to him. "You smell like Derek now," he said quietly.

"Uhh. . . kind of a reason for that," Stiles said. "You know. Sex. Still have his cock in my ass." Which he should possibly have more shame about in company, considering, but he couldn't be bothered.

Scott snorted, but shook his head. Jackson said it for him though. "No, it's deeper. Permanent. You can smell the link, now."

"We can with Lydia and Jackson, or Allison and me, too. It's just . . . different with the Alpha." Scott grinned. "No knot, for one."

"Too bad," Jackson said. "Looked fun."

Stiles snuggled back against Derek and grinned. "Actually . . . Allison found a dildo online. She linked Lydia. Just wait for Christmas, dude."

Jackson's face was an intriguing mix of interested and worried, and Stiles laughed and tipped his head for Derek's kiss, the angle awkward but the kiss perfect anyway. "Good?" he asked Derek.

Derek smiled, and Stiles was seriously not the sappy type (mostly), but he was pretty sure he'd never seen anything brighter than his wolf smiling like that, as if he'd forgotten for a little while that there was anything to be miserable about. "Good," was all he said though.

Stiles snorted. Like it would kill the guy to say it. "I want it on record that I'm the bigger man, and I'm saying it first. Love you. Asshole."

Derek still didn't say it. But his hand spread on Stiles' stomach and his smile was wide against Stiles' neck.  
***

"THIS is your solution?" Lydia asked, and Stiles cringed at her tone.

He opened his mouth to defend himself, but Danny beat him to it. "Video conferencing for this many people is hard to do, and not everyone has the hardware or connection to do it. This is simpler, pretty much any system can run the client, and it's on a dedicated server. So we control who accesses it, can keep server logs, and if anyone is shy about showing their face at first, they can ease into the community without risking it. It's a good compromise."

Lydia looked dubiously at the log-in screen, and then pursed her lips. "I want to be an elf," she said.

Stiles breathed a sigh of relief. He let Danny get Lydia started while Stiles went to bully Jackson into actually making a toon, get Erica and Boyd to stop running off to go kill things, and make Scott re-roll because they were all Horde and he wouldn't be able to talk if he was a gnome. Derek had been extensively coached already, and was hijacking Stiles' phone to play Zombie Farm while his sullen, default Orc waited for the others to come online. Normally Stiles would bitch about him screwing up his farm, but he was too grateful Derek was where he was supposed to be to bother.

Between getting his Pack online, and getting everyone ELSE'S Pack all ported to the right area for the meet up, the meeting started a good two hours behind schedule. Lydia's predictably pretty, redheaded Blood Elf Mage avatar stood atop the bank in Ogrimmar, using it as a makeshift stage, Danny's GM beside her in blue and black. The rest of them milled in random spots. Isaac's Tauren kept jumping from roof to ground and back again until Danny used his magic GM powers to freeze him in place.

There were a little over 100 wolves (and Stiles) logged on, and half barely knew how to use either the chat interface (for those without headsets) or the Vent server (for those who had them). Of the ones that did, there were seven who kept complaining how much they hated WoW, and four that kept whispering him and Danny to ask for epic purple shit. (He hooked Tania up with some serious Epic bling, but only because he liked her and she didn't bug him for it.) It took another ten minutes for him to teach everyone how to /sit, and then convince them that hitting the space bar (damnit, Isaac) or dueling would turn off /sit and could they please cut that shit out for now?

So basically, it was going better than expected.

"Okay, everyone quiet," Lydia ordered into her headset. It quieted the chatter, temporarily. She probably chalked it up to her divine Alpha skills, but it was mostly because Stiles had everyone else muted. "My name is Lydia Martin. Most of you have already spoken to me online. I'm Alpha of the Hale pack. My Second is Danny Mahealani, and Derek and Peter Hale are here to represent the Hales. To keep this from complete chaos, you have your. . . character stand when you want to speak, and then we'll give you the floor, so to speak."

An angry looking male Undead in the back stood, and Stiles checked the character against the Vent, and then unmuted them. "What about your pet Argent?" the female voice asked. Stiles recognized Kali and grimaced as a few dozen people tried to speak up at once, typing when they realized they were muted and flooding the screen with text.

Lydia managed to quiet them. On the roof her elf kept turning in circles when she left her hand on the arrow keys. "She's not here, but she will be, once she has the Bite, which she will soon. She's a friend and a member of my Pack, but I don't ask you to accept that until she's a wolf." Allison not even being in the room had been harder for Scott and Lydia to take than Allison, actually. She'd expected to not get an invite. Stiles had been of the opinion that she should just read over someone's shoulder and no one needed to be the wiser, but Boyd and Scott had started making noises about being _honest_ , so Stiles had just left it.

Kali snarled, but didn't hold the button to speak, so it cut off on its own.

A goblin girl in the front stood, and Stiles unmuted her. A soft spoken man's voice came over the Vent. "We've all read your outline and reasoning, and understand what you want to do. But more visibility is dangerous. One Argent on our side doesn't change the rest against us."

"We've all been targeted by Hunters or other groups. When our backs are up against a wall we have no one to turn to but our own Packs. We have to guard our territory so much that we never make alliances, and that makes it _easy_ for us to be isolated. That can lead to entire Packs being wiped out and no one knowing about it for months at a time," Lydia said. "This isn't visibility, it's communication and alliance."

"Horde, actually," Stiles said - into the room, not over the headset. Derek rolled his eyes but Danny grinned. Lydia picked up a coaster from the table next to her and, without looking up from her computer, threw it at Stiles' head. He grinned when Derek caught it and gave him a pecking kiss to the cheek. 

The goblin girl hopped in place, and the same careful voice asked. "But if we're tracked-"

"Totally not possible," Stiles cut in. Lydia glared across her laptop, and Stiles took the hint and shut up.

Danny picked up where he'd left off. "This is a secure server, and our forums are all as locked down as I can make them, and I can make them pretty damn hard to hack. It's as safe as we can get."

"The risk is minimal, and the benefits outweigh it. We can plan where territories are open, and where they're not, track where the major Hunter groups have been, and share information," Derek said mildly, surprising Stiles. He'd been pretty sure Derek would spend the meeting in silence.

It went on like that. And on, and on. Stiles entertained himself by dressing people in various items. He was dismayed by how much Isaac liked the slinky black nightgown Stiles put on his character, though. The questions were all stuff that had been covered a few dozen times on the forums, so he tuned it out until Derek elbowed him and Stiles looked up from where he'd been cheerfully putting Boyd's Undead in the most hideously clashing armor he could find and found everyone staring at him. "What?" he asked.

Derek pointed to a Blood Elf in game, one of the ones with no Vent, who had typed. _Is it true you have a human mate in your Pack?_

Oh. Stiles switched on his mic. "That would be me. I'm Stiles, the resident human. Hi."

The same Elf stood still - apparently, not a champion speed typist - and then asked. _Don't they ask you to be Bitten?_

"Yeah. Like all the time. I'm just kind of attached to the humanity deal," Stiles said. He waited, and then read _They always think I'll get hurt._ Oh. Huh, so he wasn't the only one. "Yeah, they worry about that. But they underestimate us humans, right?"

The Elf responded with a smiley face, and then sat down. Stiles shot her a whisper, dropping her his anon email if she wanted to talk, and went back to elaborate games of paper dolls with unwilling members of his Pack. 

Finally, Lydia was ready to wrap, and Stiles judged it . . . about as much of a success as they could have hoped for. Kali's Undead stood up again, as others were logging off, and Stiles switched her on. There was a long pause before she asked gruffly. "So, is this server going to be up all the time to play on?" she asked.

"Oh my God, I'm surrounded by nerds," Lydia said, without turning her mic on.

Stiles grinned and Danny rolled his eyes, but answered. "Yeah, we'll leave it."

Stiles's grin widened. "If you're not evil, I'll even give you presents," he said.

Kali logged off, and Stiles's grin turned into a mad cackle as he sent her character a few dozen utterly useless items in the mail she would have to open up individually, and one good purple mixed in. That accomplished, he gave in to Erica and Boyd's whining and ported them back where they could get back to killing things. They didn't say WHERE to port them to, so he dumped them into a middle of level 50 quest zone and watched them be slaughtered in under two seconds. Erica launched a pillow across the room at him as he explained how it was their fault for not being more specific. Derek didn't bother to catch it, this time.  
***

"Huh," Stiles said, squinting at the stick lying on the bathroom sink. "It's not pink and blue. TV has lied to me."

Erica lifted her head from her hands and shot Stiles a killing look. Allison patted her shoulder gently. "It'll be okay," she said.

Stiles was absolutely sure that was true. But he was also pretty sure that before they got to the okay part, there would be a lot of panicking and handwringing because their Pack was made up of an emotionally unavailable Alpha with a shoe fetish, a bunch of dysfunctional young adults, and a creeper uncle. Plus . . . "Uh, I mean I'm pretty sure there's been pills taken and condoms used, so this was plainly a happy accident but . . ." WHOSE happy accident. Because that was definitely a plus sign on the pregnancy test. And there was not a lot of separation in their happy household so- "oh my god, it could be mine," Stiles blurted.

Erica made an unhappy sound and then shook her head. "The last time we were together like that . . . too recent."

Okay, well that ruled him out. Which was good, because that was not a conversation he was ready to have with his father. He hadn't even gotten around to the group sex thing yet. (He was considering _never_ getting around to that.)

Allison stroked Erica's hair. "It doesn't matter, we all love you, and we'll all take care of you, no matter what."

"What if it's like me? What if it's an epileptic freak?" Erica asked.

"If Stiles can't be the dad, then both parents are werewolves, it will be a wolf. That won't happen, Erica," Allison said. "And you're not a freak. You never were."

Stiles kind of wanted to tell Allison to not say his name and "dad" in the same sentence, just in case, but realized that this was absolutely not a situation in which his pain and freak-out level were the primary concern. "Right. And hey, we'll be able to work out the parentage pretty quickly once it's born, right? If it's got killer cheekbones, Jackson, if it lurks straight out of the womb, Derek, ridiculous hair Isaac, not-strictly-white, Scott or Boyd?" Stiles suggested. "Strawberry-blond, and Lydia somehow managed to knock you up, despite not having a dick. Which I wouldn't rule out. She _really_ likes her strap-on."

"You are not helping," Erica said.

"I'm trying," Stiles protested. He was used to Erica putting on attitude, and he didn't realize just how upset she was until her face crumpled, and she started to cry. He blanched and then moved to perch on the shut toilet, while Allison and Erica sat on the edge of the tub. He squeezed Erica's arm. "Hey - it really will be fine, you know? I mean . . . if you don't want to have it, then we will totally take care of everything to make it easy on you - I mean as much as we can. And if you do - there are a whole lot of built-in babysitters, right?" The Pack would be useless and confused, but considering how much they doted on the puppies Erica and Isaac had finally talked Derek into, and the lousy childhoods most of them had lived through, Stiles thought a Pack kid would be ridiculously spoiled and loved. Which wasn't a bad way for the kid to grow up.

He called _not it_ on explaining the interpersonal relationships of all aunts and uncles, though. And Peter was not allowed to babysit, ever.

Allison wrapped her arm around Erica. "The odds are that it's Boyd. Do you want me to call him?"

Erica nodded mutely, and Allison leaned in to kiss the side of her mouth, and then stood and slipped out of the bathroom, leaving Stiles with Erica.

Stiles' problem wasn't usually having nothing to say. Usually, it was saying too much. But this was kind of new territory. They sat in silence, Erica sniffling now and then before she suddenly asked. "What should I do?"

"Uh . . . it's not really my area," Stiles said. "Maybe . . . you could talk to Scott's mom?" His dad had kind of started to fall into the habit of giving grown up advice to various Pack members, too, but this was definitely more in the Ms. McCall area.

Erica shook her head. "I mean . . . if it were yours. Would you . . . want it?"

Whatever Lydia liked to say, Stiles wasn't actually bad at reading what people were feeling, if he was paying attention, anyway. Erica looked miserable and unsure, but beneath it there was . . . a look. It wasn't the look of someone faced with something they didn't want. It was someone wanting something, and not sure they should have it. Sometimes, Stiles caught Jackson looking at Lydia like that . . . though with less streaked mascara and tears. "I'd be freaked," he said. "But I wouldn't be . . . sad about it? I mean panic attacks and investing in pretty much every baby book ever, yeah. But . . . we all mostly have jobs and are getting close to the finished-with-school stage. We've got a house, Lydia and Jackson have lots of money and no sense. People don't try to kill us that often, and due to a babysitting incident when Allison's cousins visited, I know for a fact Scott is a diaper-taming wizard. So . . . I mean what I'm saying is that if you're into the idea, then I don't think it's going to be a problem, and I think everyone would get into it pretty fast."

"But they're not the ones who have to have it kick them for months and then push it out of an orifice, so Stiles has absolutely no say," Lydia said from the doorway.

Stiles frowned. "How long have you been there? Are you taking Derek-Lurking lessons?"

Lydia waved a hand at him, and Erica hiccuped once and then nodded to him. Stiles took the cue and got up to leave, giving Lydia his space after a hug and kiss for Erica.

He shut the door behind him, watching Erica curl into Lydia for a second before it closed, and then went to join Allison in the kitchen. He helped himself to her corn chips and chewed his way through a handful before asking. "So . . . Boyd on the way?"

"As soon as he can get away. I didn't tell him why, but it was a strongly worded summons," Allison answered.

Stiles nodded. "Have you and Scott talked about . . . you know. Tiny crossbow wielding werewolves?"

Allison snorted. "Have you and Derek?"

"No, but there is zero chance of me ending up with one on accident, so it's less of an issue."

Allison shrugged. "We're young, and I don't even know what I want, so I'm careful. But we're a family. If not now, there's Lydia later, or Erica down the road. It'll happen. If it does, it's not a bad thing."

"You forgot Isaac finding a wandering toddler and bringing it home," Stiles said.

Allison laughed. "God, I'm so glad he didn't end up working with Scott. We'd be drowning in strays." She popped a chip in her mouth and then shrugged again. "Whatever happens, we're a family. We'll adjust. That's how family's supposed to work."

"Yeah, but that's not how most of us grew up," Stiles said.

Allison smiled a little sadly. "You did."

He guessed that was true. He had his dad, and they hadn't wanted to adapt to losing his mom, but they'd managed, and Stiles' dad was pretty awesome. "Yeah," he said. Allison's dad loved her, but she'd grown up not knowing what her family did, and then there had been a lot of bad shit in a short time. They weren't the gold standard. "So did Scott."

"You two can teach the rest of us," Allison said.

Stiles thought he could do that. Maybe he'd get his dad over for the world's weirdest family dinner next week.  
***

The first thing Stiles noticed was that Danny's tumblr dash was about 80% Doctor Who gifs and comic book scans, which meant that a. Danny was never allowed to call Stiles a geek again, and b. Stiles' chances of convincing everyone that a Batfamily Halloween motif was a good idea were much higher. The second thing he noticed was Lydia's face.

Stiles stared at the picture. "Dude. . . it's a MEME," he said.

"I just found it," Danny said tightly. "The Wolf Network is going to freak, we were _so close_ to getting them on the same page."

Stiles clicked on the tumblr and read through dozens of memes. _Fake Werewolf Girl is Team Jacob_ , _Fake Werewolf Girl thinks science is hardcore_ , _Fake Werewolf Girl - hot is better than smart_. They weren't even funny. "Lydia's going to freak out when you-" Stiles stopped and turned to look at Danny. "Did you seriously tell me before you told her so that I would tell her for you?"

Danny did not even have the decency to look guilty about his plan. "She probably won't kill you?"

"I hate you." Stiles groaned as Danny grabbed his laptop back. "How did this even happen? And why are you tracking Channing Tatum tags?"

"Her research leaked. I talked to Tania, and she thinks someone in the faculty put it out," Danny said. "I looked into it. . . I'm pretty sure it was Raymond." The question of Channing Tatum went unanswered, Stiles noticed.

He let it go though, because they had bigger concerns. And that just made it worse. Lydia had liked that asshole professor. "Why would he . . . oh shit." Stiles' brain caught up, and he looked at Danny for confirmation. "He's publishing her work, isn't he?" No one would touch articles from a 20-something prodigy who spent half her time at Yale studying _imaginary_ werewolf genes. She'd be discredited, and a tenured Yale douche could steal her research, call it his own, and no one would even think about listening to her.

"It's against the werewolf code to just let Jackson and Erica tear the guy apart, right?" Danny asked. Which was answer enough.

"She was going back up there to finish prepping her paper next week, so she had it ready in time for Medal qualification," Stiles said, banging his head against the desk. "Damnit. We have to tell her."

"Tell me what?" Lydia stepped into the living room, and Stiles shot Danny a look of betrayal. Danny tried to look innocent, but Stiles was onto him. Super werewolf senses and all - no way he hadn't known Lydia was nearby. 

Stiles started to push the blame onto Danny, but then stopped. Lydia had no makeup on, her hair was pulled back and might possibly look slightly greasy, by Lydia standards. Her eyes were slightly puffy, too. "You saw the meme, didn't you?"

"It started a few days ago," Lydia admitted. "I've been removed from the research credits and my submission to _The Annals of Mathematics_ had its acceptance revoked on the grounds it wasn't my own work. My father's friend on the board at Yale says they're working on a formal reprimand."

"We have all your research. Hard copies, timestamped video and files. We can fight it," Danny said quietly.

Jackson drifted in behind Lydia, looping his arms around her waist. "That's what I said."

"No," Lydia said. "If I back and forth to try to fight over it, he'll just leak more of whatever research he cribbed from us, and the more he leaks, the less support we'll have from the other Packs. We need that more than I need a Fields Medal."

Stiles chewed on his lip. "But you deserve it," he said. He'd never seen Lydia NOT fight for something. It was unnerving. He hesitated, and then said slowly. "Maybe we can take care of two birds with one stone. We've been building the network. I know you wanted to go public eventually."

"In ten years, maybe," Lydia said. "We wouldn't have the support now." But she was frowning in thought.

"What's going to change in ten years?" Danny asked.

"More Packs on our side," Jackson said. "Stilinski figuring out a way for us all to meet that doesn't involve elves and swords."

"Maybe," Stiles said. "And shut up about WoW. It was an elegant solution. But how many werewolves do you need to be public, anyway? Tania's Pack, the Corbettes in Georgia, the Smith Pack, and the Ramirez Pack, and the nutjobs from the Alpha Pack will back us now. The rest . . . we don't have to say _where_ they are unless they're willing."

"I don't like hiding," Lydia said softly. "And I don't like letting someone else win."

"It's probably going to get us all killed, but hey, that almost happens every few months anyway," Stiles said.

"My family has a house and land in Connecticut that's meant for me, anyway. I could put it in someone else's name and if it goes bad, we pull up stakes and head there," Danny said.

"Uh, counts as running, I think?" Stiles said.

"It's a fallback, not a plan," Danny said. "We can take a stupid risk, but not without an exit strategy."

Lydia was leaning into Jackson thoughtfully, and finally she turned to face him. "It would change everything. What do you want me to do?" she asked him quietly.

Jackson searched her face and then smiled. "Since when do you ask my opinion?" he asked. He pulled her in, kissing sweet and long. "It's your Medal, right? Lets go get it."

"She's not even in the running yet!" Stiles said. Not that it really mattered. Lydia always got what she set out to get, so she would be. Well, her work would be, sans her name. Which wasn't right, and they absolutely shouldn't let it stand. Even if it probably meant chaos and possible loss of life and limb. 

"Stiles has to tell Derek," Lydia said sweetly.

Stiles was against this new, "Stiles handles bad news" policy. But that one was fair enough, he guessed. "Danny gets Erica, then, and her pregnant hormones."

"We're not doing this blind. We take our time, we plan, and we get as many people with us as we can," Lydia decided.

"And put a lot of cash in bags in case it goes bad," Danny said.

"You are such a downer," Stiles complained.

"Someone has to be practical," Jackson said, letting go of Lydia with one arm to pull Danny into a kiss.

"That is why I recruited him," Lydia agreed. "Someone order in dinner, and get everyone home for the night."

"Aye aye. Pizza and summons," Stiles said. The familiar, focused look on Lydia's face was a lot more reassuring than the defeat he'd seen before. Lydia with a plan was a force of nature, and Stiles would forever be glad she was on the same side as him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section title from [The House Where We All Live](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBNsCLHyEAw).

**Author's Note:**

> Section title is from [American Baby](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU8SbHTVavA).


End file.
